Mother Bird
by Irony-chan
Summary: Set during and after 'Avengers': Natasha might have a chance to repay her debt to Hawkeye if she can save the passengers on a hijacked airplane, but she gets on board only to find she's walked into a trap set by old rivals from the Red Room. The research I did for this story has probably put my name on multiple terrorist watch lists.
1. Chapter 1: Deleted Scenes

The air smelled like rich earth and new grass when Natasha pulled to a stop in front of the farmhouse. It was early on a Wednesday morning, with the sun still low and pale in the sky. Nat had a lot to do that day, but nobody had argued when she'd asked to take a couple of hours to do this – especially not Director Fury, who was just as happy that _he_ wouldn't have to be the bearer of bad news. Although she ought to have been in a hurry, she shut off the engine of her rented Camaro and sat quietly for a moment with her hands on the steering wheel. There hadn't been much tranquility in her life, ever – she needed to savor it when she found it, and this was one of the few places she ever had.

It was fresh and chilly out, with dew still glittering on the lawn, but the front door of the house was propped open with a full suitcase, and the family van was waiting by the steps with luggage already in the back. Nat could hear the ducks on the pond out back, and when she listened intently there was the sound of running water inside. People here were awake and active, and had been for at least half an hour. They would be in a hurry, too.

With a sigh, Natasha undid her seat belt and went to knock on the door.

The woman who answered it a few seconds later was a stranger, a bit taller than Nat with straight dark hair to her shoulders. She looked enough like Laura, however, that Natasha quickly figured out who she was, and greeted her with a smile.

"You must be Audrey," Nat said. "Is your sister still here? I'm Natasha – I'm Clint's friend from work."

Audrey Langlands would have no reason to find this suspicious. She, like most of the people he knew outside of SHIELD, thought Clint Barton worked for the FAA. "Oh, yes, she's in the kitchen," she said, opening the screen door to let Natasha in. "Laura!" she called. "It's for you!"

A moment later, Laura Barton entered the foyer, drying her hands on a garter-stitch towel. Seven-year-old Cooper was close behind her, and when he saw Natasha, he dropped his backpack and ran to give her a hug.

"Hi, Auntie Nat!" he said eagerly. "Is Dad gonna come with us after all?"

"I'm afraid not, kiddo," Natasha replied, ruffling the boy's blond hair. "I just need to talk to your Mom for a minute. Is that okay?"

"Sure," said Cooper, although he looked puzzled. He must be wondering why Auntie Nat would come all this way, without Dad, to talk to Mom when she could have phoned. Young as he was, he would probably already suspect it was bad news.

If Cooper suspected, his mother _knew_. Laura looked at her sister. "Can you give us a minute, Audrey?" she asked.

"Sure." Audrey reached for Cooper's hand. "Come on, Coop, let's go make sure your sister's up – I have a feeling she went back to sleep."

As soon as they'd vanished up the stairs, Laura's warm smile dropped and she looked at Nat with fear in her eyes. Cooper might not be able to guess why Natasha would come here alone instead of calling, but Laura definitely could. "Where's Clint?" she asked.

"We don't know," Natasha admitted. "We're looking for him."

"What happened?" Laura hesitated. "Or are you not allowed to tell me?"

"Technically I'm not, but I'm going to anyway," said Nat. Fury had a problem with that, but Natasha didn't care. Letting people _suspect_ that something was terribly wrong without actually _telling_ them was just cruel. People who knew what was wrong would know what kind of worst they should be preparing for. People who didn't were in limbo.

Laura nodded, then glanced up at the sound of children's voices upstairs. "Come and have a cup of coffee," she said. From the kitchen they'd be able to hear Audrey and the kids coming in time to not be overheard.

It was colder in the kitchen than in the rest of the house. Part of the south wall was missing, where Clint had removed it so he could install a bay window to match the one in the bedroom above. It would let more light in, he'd said, and give Laura a place to put her plants in the winter. They'd covered the hole with a sheet of thick plastic, but the warmth still escaped. Laura filled two mugs – cream and sugar for herself, and sugar only for her guest – and sat down opposite from Nat.

"Tell me," she said.

Natasha took a deep breath. "Has he mentioned the tesseract at all?" she wanted to know. Laura shook her head – she didn't pry into Clint's work because she knew that doing so would be dangerous for herself and him. "It's something SHIELD's been using to try to create... let's call it a wormhole," Nat decided. "It's a kind of tunnel between one point in our universe and another, or even between different universes."

"Like on _Stargate_ ," Laura said. She twisted her wedding ring on her finger distractedly. "Did Clint fall in?" she asked, her voice tight. Natasha knew exactly what she was imagining in that moment – she was picturing Clint stranded on some other planet, with no way home and no hope of rescue.

"No," Natasha assured her quickly. "He's still on Earth. But they did open a wormhole, and something came through. It had..." she tried to think of a way to say this tactfully, without scaring her, but quickly realized there wasn't one. "It had mind control powers of some sort. Clint was one of the first people it took over."

Laura didn't immediately react. She just sat there a moment, her eyes flicking over Natasha's face in which Nat recognized as a search for any evidence that she were joking, or that Laura had misunderstood. It was a perfectly natural reaction to being told something like that.

"Whatever he does under that influence, he won't be held responsible for it," Natasha said. "SHIELD doesn't work that way."

"I know," Laura said quickly. She shut her eyes and swallowed hard. "That's why they're sending us away, then."

Natasha nodded. "We have to assume it knows everything Clint knows," she said. "We don't _think_ it's going to come for you..."

"But we're better safe than sorry," Laura finished for her. "I understand, I really do, but... god, what's _happening_ to the world, Natasha?" she asked, looking earnestly into Nat's eyes. "Clint's work has always been sensitive, but in the past couple of years it's just gotten so _weird_. Giants and gods, and now whatever this is. What is going _on_?"

Was she blaming Nat? Certainly the _timing_ would suggest that it was Natasha who'd led Clint into this bizarre new reality. When Natasha met her friend's gaze, however, she didn't see anger or reproach. There was only fear, and Laura Barton of all people had every right to be afraid. With creatures like Thor and the Hulk popping up, and humans like Tony Stark and Natasha herself trying to rise to the challenge, everybody was afraid. For most people, however, it was something that was happening far away. For Laura, it was right there in her family.

Nat reached forward and put a hand on Laura's arm. "I'm going to get him back for you," she said. _That_ was what she'd come here to say. It was the sort of assurance that had to be delivered in promise.

"Thank you," said Laura, but because it was polite, not because she believed it.

"I mean it." Natasha squeezed her shoulder. "I _will_ get him back. I promise. Okay?"

Laura nodded, and reached up to wipe tears out of the corners of her eyes as footsteps on the stairs announced that the children were coming. By the time Lila, aged three and a half, came charging into the kitchen, Laura was on her feet and cleaning up the breakfast dishes, facing the sink while she composed herself.

"Auntie Nat!" Lila climbed into Nat's lap. "Are you coming to Australia, too?"

"Sorry, no, I'm not," said Natasha. She checked her watch. "Actually, I really shouldn't stay much longer. I've got to catch a plane, too."

"Where are you going?" asked Cooper, leading Audrey back into the room.

"I'm going to India, to meet a very important doctor." Natasha set Lila on the floor and stood up. "Thanks for the coffee, Laura."

"Anytime, Nat," Laura replied.

"Let me finish that up." Audrey came to take the dishcloth from her sister. "You can see your friend out."

Laura and the children followed Natasha back to her car outside. The sun was a little higher now, shining over the trees to make the dewy grass glitter. One of the ducks was now on the front porch, apparently basking in the warmth.

"Are you going to ride an elephant in India?" asked Lila, as Natasha got back in her car.

"I don't think I'll have time," Natasha told her. "It's a business trip. I'll try to bring you back something with an elephant _on_ it, okay?" She loved bringing the children souvenirs.

"Okay," said Lila brightly. "And we'll bring you back something from Australia! Deal?"

"It's a deal," Natasha said. "High five." She held up her hand, and Lila and Cooper each slapped it in turn. "I'll see you in a couple of weeks," she added to Laura, closing the door. "A promise is a promise."

The family waved as Natasha drove away, and Nat hoped she'd managed to instill some confidence. The Black Widow didn't make promises very often – her life was too dangerous and complicated for that – but the ones she made, she intended to keep. She was going to keep this one.

* * *

Ten days later, she was finally able to say she had done so.

The SHIELD agents who'd come barging into the Shawarma restaurant had whisked Clint away to a secure hospital facility. There they'd spent the days since going over every muscle and nerve in his body to make sure Loki's scepter hadn't had any lasting effect on him. They'd found some nasty bruises and burns that nobody had noticed during the battle itself, and two cracked ribs he'd somehow managed to downplay, and were insisting on treating those before they would let him go home.

Natasha had a good idea what Clint was going to think of _that_. Sure enough, when she knocked on the door of his hospital room she found him sitting up in bed, firing bits of folded paper across the room with an elastic band. The room and everything in it had the nasty antiseptic smell characteristic of hospitals, which brought unpleasant childhood memories bubbling up in Nat's brain – but they sank away again quickly when Clint smiled at her.

"Nat!" he said, and let the elastic go – it went flying across the room and pinged off the window before vanishing. "Please let me you've come to smuggle me out of here!"

She snorted. "Sure, I'll just stuff you under my shirt and walk out." Nat pulled up a chair and sat down next to the bed. "I threatened a few key staff members and got them to agree that you're recovering quickly. You should be out of here in a couple of days, just in time to see Fury release the Cube. He's handing it and Loki over to Thor, to take them back where they belong."

"Good riddance," said Clint, and then licked his lips. Natasha sat and waited. Sure enough, it didn't take long. There were games Clint Barton could win, but contests of patience were not among them. "Okay," he said. "What's the bad news?"

"No bad news," Natasha assured him. "They're safe. Fury got them out of the country, as soon as he heard you'd been compromised."

Clint slumped with relief. "You just enjoy torturing me," he said.

"You could have asked earlier," she pointed out.

"Yeah, well, I wasn't sure _I_ believed Loki wasn't still listening in," said Clint. "I didn't want to know where they were, because if I knew, he'd know."

Nat nodded slowly. "Did he threaten them?" she asked. It wouldn't have surprised her.

But Clint said, "no. He _knew_ about them," he added, voice heavy, "but it didn't matter. He wasn't going to make threats or promises, because he didn't need to. I was already in his power, and if he won, they would probably die anyway. They were less than nothing to him" He fiddled with the hem of his pajama shirt. "I didn't want to give him a reason to think otherwise."

"They're fine," Natasha repeated, and pulled a cell phone out of her pocket. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Clint's expression change from distracted relief back to worry. He was always very careful about contacting his family while on SHIELD property – there was always the chance something could be traced. "Calm down," said Nat, "it's pre-paid under a fake name, and I put an old KGB code in it that makes it ping off multiple towers, so its location can never be pinned down. Nobody will follow the signal back here. I'd better warn you, however," she added, dialing the number, "it's four in the morning where they are."

"What?" Clint had been in the act of reaching for the phone, but now he paused. "Where _are_ they?"

"Sydney, Australia," Nat told him.

He blinked in surprise, then smiled. "Laura's always wanted to go to Australia."

"That's why I told Fury to send them there," Natasha agreed. "The cover is that she won a radio phone-in contest. Since her husband was away in Europe working on a helicopter accident in the Pyrenees, she took her sister along instead."

"That's great." Clint grinned. "Audrey and the kids will have a blast. Laura will be too busy worrying, but I'm sure she'll do her best." He held out a hand, and Nat put the phone in it – all he had to do now was press 'talk'. While he put it to his ear, she began to get up.

"Oh, you can stay," Clint protested.

"Nah, I don't think my stomach could handle listening to you two murmur sweet nothings," Natasha replied with a smile. "I'll just be in the hall if you need me." She patted Clint's arm, and slipped out into the hallway.

So far, the past forty-eight hours had been blissfully free of surprises. It was a nice change of pace, but Natasha didn't expect it to last very long. Sure enough, in the hospital hall she got a got a nasty shock indeed. Across from the door of Clint's room was an uncomfortable metal bench, under a supposedly arty black and white photograph of the Manhattan skyline. Sitting on the bench, as surprised to see Natasha as she was to see him, was Bruce Banner.

"Hello, um, Agent Romanov." Banner got to his feet. For a half a second all Natasha could see was insane green eyes and tearing clothing. Her ears filled with the cry of _stop lying to me!_ and her nose with the stink of sweat and adrenaline... but then she forced herself to stop, and look instead at the man with the sheepish smile and curly dark hair. He'd greeted her politely, and smelled of laundry soap and green tea. Banner was _not_ the Hulk, she reminded herself. He'd changed on the helicarrier only because Loki had forced him to. Right here, right now, she was in no danger.

Was she?

"Hello, Dr. Banner," she replied politely. "What are you doing here?" She doubted _he_ was here to see Clint.

"I'm just here to see a man about a mutant abomination," he replied, in a voice meant to _sound_ like sarcasm but not actually containing any. Natasha wondered if he were talking about himself, Blonsky, or the material the army had seized from Sterns' lab at Empire State. "How about you?"

"I had to deliver a message," said Nat, honest but vague. Could she leave? No, Clint would expect her to return when he'd finished his phone call. Could she leave and come _back_ after Banner left? But Banner might be here all day. He looked perfectly in control of himself now, but this same man had transformed into a monster twice while she watched. Her fear could not be reasoned with, any more than the Hulk himself.

"Well, uh..." Banner sucked on his lips for a moment. "I didn't expect to see you again after the explosion on the carrier," he said, "and then when I did there was kind of a lot going on. So since we're both here now, I want to apologize."

"There's nothing to apologize for, Dr. Banner," Natasha made herself say. "Loki was manipulating all of us. If you hadn't changed after the explosion, he would have found some other way to make you do it."

"Which is why I should never have agreed to come with you in the first place," he said, head down. "Would you believe I'm tired of being told it's not my fault? Because it _is_ my fault. The other guy exists because I was arrogant and irresponsible, and whether anybody likes to admit it or not, everything he does is my fault. Will you let me apologize because it'll make _me_ feel better?"

Natasha nodded, half to herself. That was what apologies were _for_ , wasn't it? They were like band-aids. They pretended to cure, but in reality they only covered what would have to heal on its own.

"All right," she said. "Apology accepted. If I can apologize also, for insisting that you come when you obviously didn't want to." Maybe that would help him feel like it was all right.

"It all seems to have worked out okay," he offered. "So yeah, don't worry about it."

A couple of awkward moments passed, in which neither said anything but the conversation had not been properly ended. Natasha began to wonder again if she could just make an excuse and _leave_ , but then, thankfully, Banner's phone beeped. He looked relieved, too, as he pulled it out to check – it was brand-new, with the transparent screen of a Stark device. Probably a gift.

"I gotta go," he said.

"Yeah," Natasha agreed. "That sounds important."

"I guess I'll see you again. You know. Next time the world needs saving," Banner offered.

"Right, next time," said Nat. Was there going to be a next time? The Battle of New York would have been high on a list of things she never, ever wanted to do again, and yet... yeah, she was pretty sure there _would_ be a next time. The world had never gotten _less_ strange or dangerous before, and that wasn't likely to change.

A few minutes later, she heard Clint call her name from inside the hospital room. This time, when she opened the door, she found him smiling.

"I'm guessing that went well," she said.

Clint beamed. "She's very proud of me, actually," he said.

"Mind control _does_ give you an easy excuse for doing stupid things," Natasha said with a smirk. "So what's the plan?" She doubted very much whether the Barton family would be taking the rest of their vacation.

"Well, Audrey apparently wants to stay the full two weeks," Clint replied, "but Laura and the kids are gonna come straight home. She said they'll catch the first flight they can get, which means they'll probably be arriving very early tomorrow morning, while I'm still stuck in this place." He pouted a little and raised his brows, making a deliberate pleading face.

She rolled her eyes. "You're lucky I like you. What flight, what airport?"

"They don't know yet. I told her to text you at that phone number," he said, and handed her the phone back. "Don't bring them here. Just take them back to Iowa, and I'll go join them as soon as I'm allowed."

"I will," Nat promised. She tucked the phone into the inside pocket of he jacket. "Anything else? You wouldn't do the sad puppy face for just _one_ favour."

"Yeah," he said. "I am definitely going to die if I have to eat any more hospital food."

Natasha nodded. "I figured," she said. "Baby back ribs, coming right up."

About an hour later, Nat had left Clint with barbecue sauce on her fingers and was on her way up the stairs in the parking garage. She'd just reached her car when the phone buzzed, and pulled it out to find a text from Laura Barton.

 _AA113 LAX 3:10 AM_.

Nat put the phone back in her jacket and got in the car. She'd planned to go back to the Plaza Hotel, where Stark was putting them all up in style while he figured out what he was going to do about the top of his building. Now, she decided, since LaGuardia and JFK were both still closed in the wake of the Chi'Tauri invasion, she would go to Harrison airstrip and fly herself to Los Angeles.

She and Clint had not talked about what would happen after she took Laura and the kids home to the farm, but she knew he wouldn't mind if she stayed a while, and Fury could hardly argue that she – or anybody else on the so-called 'team' – didn't deserve a vacation. It wouldn't be the first time Nat had gone to the Bartons' to escape from the world for a while, and it wasn't going to be the last, either. Their isolated home was the perfect place to stay under the radar for a while. Nobody in the nearby town had ever heard of the Black Widow, and weren't likely to connect Mr. Barton's friend from work to the redhead in the black catsuit who hung out with superheroes. She could help Clint replace that window, and do some work on her own knitting and embroidery, which had lain neglected for weeks.

Nat didn't get a lot of normal in her life. When the opportunity presented itself, she couldn't pass it up.

* * *

The letters AA in Laura's text stood for Air Aurora, an Australian airline that specialized in long-haul flights across the Pacific to North and South America. According to the LAX website, flight 113 from Sydney was due to arrive at Terminal B, Gate Twelve, around 3:11 in the morning. That gave Nat some eight hours to kill after landing at Santa Monica. Most people wouldn't have had any trouble finding some way to amuse themselves in California, and Natasha Romanov was no exception. In fact, as she picked up another car at a Go Rentals across the street from the airport, she already knew exactly how she was going to spend her evening. She would head up to Malibu, and drop in at Stark Industries for dinner with Pepper Potts.

Nat had never really gotten the hang of making female friends, and she and Pepper had gotten off to a rocky start – but once they'd realized they had a common enemy in Tony Stark's bottomless capacity for bullshit, they'd bonded quickly. In flights of fancy Natasha had even thought about quitting SHIELD and going to work for Pepper full-time in a job where she was valued, respected, and would never be asked to kill anybody. In the real world, however, she knew that wasn't possible. Nat knew too much, and could _do_ too much, to ever really lead a normal life.

An evening with Pepper would be a nice head start on the pretending she was planning to do, though. She'd already called ahead to let her friend know she was coming, but as Natasha pulled up in front of the building she felt the prepaid phone in her pocket buzz again. Nat parked the car and undid her seat belt, then pulled it out to see who was texting her. Maybe Clint had gotten out of the hospital early, or Laura wanted to give her more details about the flight. Natasha pulled the phone out and swiped the screen.

The text was from Laura's number and contained only one word – but that one word was not _early_ , _late_ , or even _canceled_. It was _hijacked_.

Natasha froze. Outwardly she maintained her composure – nobody who looked at her would see anything but a woman casually checking her phone in her car – but inside, she went cold. Should she send a reply? For a moment she was going to, but then decided against it. In the panic of the moment Laura might have forgotten to turn off her ringtone, and a text arriving could attract the hijackers' attention. So, with no acknowledgment whatsoever, she tossed the cheap phone onto the dashboard and pulled out her own cell to call Fury.

Nick Fury would not answer his private line unless the caller were on an approved list. Nat's number was there, and seeing it must have been enough to tell Fury that the call was important. He picked up halfway through the second ring.

"Fury," he said.

"What's happening to flight 113?" Natasha demanded.

"I don't know," said Fury, startled. "What _is_ happening to flight 113?"

"You don't know?" Nat generally assumed that Fury knew everything that was happening in the world at a given time – or at least, everything of any importance. But if Laura had only just texted her, the hijacking had probably occurred only minutes ago, and Fury was probably run ragged dealing with the press and cleanup in New York. No surprise, then, if he hadn't heard yet. "I just got a text from Laura Barton. She and the kids are on Air Aurora 113 to LAX. She says it's been hijacked." What was _wrong_ with the human race, Nat wondered, when mere days after an _alien invasion_ people were already back to pointlessly squabbling among themselves over money, oil, and politics?

"I'll look into it," Fury promised. "Will you have your phone?"

"Yes, but I'm on my way back to the airport." Natasha started the car again. "Have Santa Monica refuel the quinjet I borrowed, and get me a tacsuit and gear – bites, discs, and glocks."

Fury didn't answer right away. Natasha was halfway out of the parking lot, with her phone wedged between her cheek and shoulder as she drove, before he replied. "Natasha," he said, "you're _not_ going to try to board a commercial airliner forty thousand feet above the Pacific ocean."

She recognized his tone – it was the 'stern but loving father figure' voice he used when he was trying to convince her that he was doing something for her own good. Natasha rarely let him do things for her own good. "I won't if I don't have to," she promised. "But have my things there, just in case."

"Natasha," he repeated.

"I'm _going_ ," she said. In her mind, there was absolutely no argument possible. Just days earlier, Loki had mocked Natasha for her interest in Clint Barton's welfare. She'd replied, with perfect honesty, _love is for children_. _I owe him a debt_. It was not the sort of debt she could ever really repay, but this was an opportunity to try.

And Nick Fury knew that perfectly well. "Quinjet and widow gear," he said. "What else will you need?"

When she arrived back at Santa Monica airport, Natasha found three SHIELD vehicles and a fuel truck parked around her quinjet, with agents waiting to meet her. She parked the car and got out, and the man who was evidently in charge stepped forward to shake her hand. He was in his forties, slightly overweight but with a full head of dark hair that only had a few threads of silver in it yet. In the overpowering airport smell of sun-baked pavement and jet fuel Natasha could not get an idea of his personal scent, but the hairs on his sleeves told her that he owned a fluffy white dog, maybe a Samoyed.

"Agent Romanov? Jim Chiba," he said. "I'm your pilot."

"Thank you, Agent Chiba," she replied, ignoring the attempted handshake and heading straight for the jet. "Who has my gear?"

"I do." Another man offered her a duffle bag with her tacsuit and weapons in it. Another offered a leather portfolio. Natasha leafed through this and found blueprints of the plane, a passenger list, and copies of Air Aurora's files for the crew. She'd review that on the way. "Do you want to request any additional personnel, Agent Romanov?"

Nat had to smile to herself – Fury knew he couldn't talk her out of it, so he was just going to make sure she had all the help he could give her. "I need somebody to take that car back to the rental place," she said. "And call Pepper Potts to tell her I won't make it for dinner after all."

Normal was just going to have to wait. The Black Widow was going back to work.


	2. Chapter 2: Leaving on a Jet Plane

Natasha herself had been the last person to fly the quinjet. Jim Chiba was considerably taller than she, and had to move the seat back almost as far as it would go. While he prepped for takeoff, Natasha changed into her tacsuit and got her weapons ready, and quietly cursed Clint and Fury and their stupid secrecy agreement. A _normal_ SHIELD agent would have requested somebody on board to protect their family, but no – in Clint's mind, a bodyguard was just one more person who would then know his most vulnerable spot. Damn him.

"Has Fury confirmed the hijacking?" asked Nat. She didn't believe for a moment that Laura would lie or joke about something so serious, but Fury would double-check everything, just to be sure.

"Yes, Ma'am," said Chiba. "Sydney Airport says the flight departed forty-five minutes late. Several of the flight attendants had been to a party the previous day and developed food poisoning, and the airline had to cover the shifts at short notice."

"That's a great start," Natasha snorted.

"Everything proceeded normally for the first hour of the flight," Chiba went on. He'd closed the ramp, and was now moving the jet onto the taxiway. When using a commercial airport like Santa Monica, a runway takeoff was preferred – verticals got in the way of the existing flight lanes. "They were supposed to make one final check in with Australian Center Control before heading out over the ocean, at just about the time you called Fury. They didn't, and now they've vanished from the controllers' screens, which indicates that their transponder and GPS have been turned off."

The news about the flight attendants hadn't surprised Natasha at all – if one or more crew members suddenly became ill, it would provide hijackers with a perfect opportunity to sneak their own people on board. The transponder, however, made her already chilled blood run even colder. "I thought that wasn't something you could do from the cockpit," she said.

"It isn't," Chiba affirmed. "Somebody would have to remove part of the dashboard and physically cut the wires."

"In flight," said Natasha. That was incredibly dangerous – one wrong wire and you would be nose-down in the sea. Whoever had done this was either incredibly confident or incredibly desperate, perhaps both. "Any claims of responsibility? Demands?"

"Not yet, but it only just happened thirty minutes ago," said Chiba. "Once it hits the news, _then_ we're expecting people to speak up."

And most of those claims, Natasha knew, would be fake – terrorists did things for _attention_ , and they would take any opportunity offered for five minutes in the public eye. It would take the government days or weeks to determine who was _really_ responsible. The Barton family, and the rest of the people on flight 113, didn't have that kind of time.

"Buckle up, Agent Romanov," said Chiba. "We've been cleared for takeoff."

The quinjet roared into a clear blue sky above the Pacific Ocean.

There were some thirteen thousand kilometers between Los Angeles and the last recorded position of the passenger plane. If the Air Aurora 747 continued on the course programmed into its autopilot, the supersonic quinjet would meet it in about four hours. That would put them both right in the middle of the South Pacific, halfway between Australia and Hawai'i with nothing but water for hundreds of miles in all directions. Not a good place for Natasha to attempt an assault on the plane.

But the hijackers probably weren't going to Los Angeles. Their most likely destination would be somewhere in Asia. There would be enough fuel on board to make Tokyo or Beijing, or even as far north as Khabarovsk. Hopefully Fury would get back in touch and let them know what the jet's new heading was. That might give Natasha a clue, also, who she could expect to meet on board.

Nat was studying blueprints of the plane itself when the radio crackled, and she heard Fury's voice. She put her dossier aside and went to see what he'd learned.

"Have you got something for me?" she asked, leaning on the back of Chiba's seat to be heard better.

Fury's face on the screen would have looked as stoic as ever to somebody who didn't know him well – but Natasha could pick out the tension in the muscles around his eyes, and the tiny twitch at the corners of his lips that meant he was nervous. If she'd been in the room with him, he probably would have smelled of it. "I've got our satellites tracking the plane," he said. "It's still on course for Los Angeles. Looks like the hijackers are letting the autopilot take care of things."

"What kind of sense does that make?" Natasha frowned. "If they disabled the transponder, that suggests they didn't want anybody to know where they were going. Why go to the trouble if they're not going to change course?"

"Maybe they don't know how to turn off the autopilot," Chiba suggested. "Or there've been cases where hijackers have ordered a pilot to change course but he only pretended to obey them."

"If the pilot were still in control and wanted to land the plane safely, he'd have turned around and gone back to Australia," said Natasha. That would have been the nearest land, leaving them the most extra fuel. "And I can't believe that somebody who knows how to deactivate the transponder wouldn't know what to do with the autopilot."

"You'll have to ask them," said Fury. "If you both continue on your present headings, intercept will be in an hour and half."

"Thanks," Nat nodded. "Romanov out."

"How are you planning to get on board?" asked Chiba. "I've never heard of anybody boarding a passenger jet in flight."

"Lucky you, you're gonna have front-row seats." Natasha patted his shoulder and returned to the back to get her equipment ready.

* * *

A jumbo jet was a very large machine on a human scale, but a tiny speck in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Even after Chiba had sighted it on the quinjet's long-range radar, she didn't quite feel sure they'd found it until she actually _saw_ the plane. The fuselage was gleaming white with a navy blue tail fin, and painted with an orange and yellow stripe that ran through the lower line of windows and became the letters _AA_ on the tail.

"Get closer," Natasha ordered. She wanted to be able to read the registration number under the upper windows – that would tell her for sure if this were the right plane. "There it is – AU-YBBW. This is it."

The plane was a Boeing 747-400, with the business class section in the characteristic hump behind the cockpit and economy in the main fuselage below. Its capacity was around six hundred passengers, but the manifest in the documents she'd been given had indicated that flight 113, because of its early morning takeoff time, was only about half full. Counting the crew there were less than four hundred people on board, but that was still a lot. The hijackers would have had to overpower at least the cockpit crew to gain control of the aircraft, and would doubtless have worried about the passengers trying to fight back.

"AA-113," said Chiba into the radio. "This is SHIELD Q-12, SHIELD Quebec-One-Two at your four o'clock, please respond."

There was no replied.

"Alpha Alpha One One Three," Chiba repeated, enunciating. "This is SHIELD Q-12 off your starboard side, please respond."

"Get closer," Natasha repeated.

"We're already at risk for running into their wake," Chiba protested.

"Fury wouldn't have sent you if you weren't capable of handling it," said Natasha. "I want to see if I can get a look through the windows."

"What if they make a sudden turn?" he asked. A midair collision at this altitude would leave no survivors.

"They're on autopilot," Natasha reminded him. "They'll keep going straight and level."

Chiba inched the quinjet closer to the plane, staying above and in front of it to avoid the worst of the turbulence, until he was only about a wing's length away. Natasha focused her binoculars on the cockpit glass, but couldn't see anybody in the pilot's seat. Nor were there any faces visible in the row of portal-like windows in the cabins. The passengers and crew, if they were still alive, should have been able to hear the quinjet's engines, even over the roar of the 747's own four Rolls Royce RB211s. They should have been looking for the source of the sound, especially if they knew they'd been hijacked and were hoping for a rescue – but there was no sign of life at all.

"Tell Fury it doesn't look like there's anybody on board," she said, forcing her voice to remain professional despite the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. "Once I'm on board, I want you to head for... better make it Fiji. Get in touch with Nadi International Airport and tell them I'm gonna be making an emergency landing." Nadi would have a runway long enough for a big jet, and facilities to deal with the casualties, whatever sort they were. How _Nat_ would deal with any casualties on a personal level was, of course, another question entirely, and not one she could afford to think about right now. Right now, she had a job to do.

She started buckling herself into a harness. "Maintain our proximity to the jet," she said. "And drop back a little – I need access to the cargo doors.

"We're at forty thousand feet," Chiba warned her.

"I'm aware," she promised him. She clipped her safety line to the floor of the quinjet and put on an oxygen mask, signaling to Chiba that he should do the same. Black Widow agents were trained from childhood to get by on less oxygen than normal people, doped up with extra myoglobin to store the gas in their muscles – but that didn't mean she wouldn't miss it when it wasn't there.

"All right, open her up!" she ordered.

Chiba opened the hatch. The warm air inside the quinjet rushed out all at once, dumping its moisture into a bitter ice fog that lingered for a few seconds and then cleared, leaving Nat blinking in the blinding sunshine and thin, odorless air of an altitude a third again higher than Mount Everest. The white flank of the passenger jet was as bright as a snowbank and perilously close, but not quite close enough.

"Closer!" she shouted at Chiba.

"How close?" he asked, his voice almost lost in the roaring wind.

"Ninety feet!" she said.

"That's suicide," he protested.

Natasha rolled her eyes. "You're a SHIELD pilot, right?" she asked. "Your file says you flew F-18s in Iraq! You were a Blue Angel!"

"Yeah, but..."

"Shut up and fly!" said Nat. She was _not_ missing this because of an aging pilot's sudden attack of cowardice.

The quinjet began to shake as it brushed the 747's slipstream. Nat did her best to ignore it as she mounted an epoxy grapple in a gyroscopic cannon, and took aim. She'd used this device to board ships at sea before, but this was the first time she'd be using it on an airplane. If it didn't hold, there would be some six miles to fall, into an ocean nearly as deep again.

"Have you ever done this before?" Chiba asked. Despite the fact that he had to shout at the top of his lungs, Natasha could still make out the pleading note.

"Nope! I'm improvising!" she replied with false cheer. She aimed for a place next to the rear cargo door, adjusted for the howling high-altitude wind, and fired. A harpoon flew through the air, unspooling kevlar cable as it went, and stuck exactly where she'd wanted it to – within a foot of the door. The point pierced the aluminum hull of the airplane, but the epoxy bubbled out immediately, sealing the whole and gluing the harpoon itself in place. The joint thus formed ought to be able to support a weight of two tons, but it had never been tested at this altitude or these speeds.

Nat hooked her harness to the line between the cannon and the harpoon. "Give me about another twenty feet of altitude," she told Chiba.

The quinjet rose, and the shaking subsided a bit as they left the turbulent air moving over the 747's wings. The line reeled out between the two aircraft. When Natasha glanced back, she could see Chiba's reflection in the quinjet windshield. He was white as a ghost.

"Okay, good," Nat told him. She locked the cable and took a deep breath, then undid the carabiner holding her to the floor of the quinjet, and slid along the line towards the passenger plane.

Natasha had ziplined before, and despite the miles between her and the ocean below, this actually wasn't the worst time. The planes were passing over a layer of cloud, which hid the altitude and looked reassuringly like a giant safety net beneath her dangling feet. The wind was cutting, tearing tears from her eyes and freezing them instantly on her lashes, but it was no worse than some places in Antarctica. But in order to the quinjet to be out of the worst of the turbulence the slope had to be very steep, and when Natasha tried to put the brake on her zipline, she found it frozen solid. She slammed hard against the side of the plane and had to hang there a moment, waiting for her head to stop spinning and the ringing in her ears to pass.

"Romanov?" Chiba's terrified voice asked in her radio earpiece. "Agent Romanov? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine!" Nat gasped, trying to shake herself back to normal functioning. Her hands were trembling a bit, but she managed to clip herself to the harpoon and hit the button that would release the line from the cannon. The wind immediately caught it and blew it back to trail behind the plane, and Natasha saw the back hatch of the quinjet close again. She was on her own now, hanging on to the side of plane moving at six hundred miles her hour, with nothing but air between her and a bone-shattering impact with the ocean.

"That was good flying, Chiba," she said. "I'll buy you a drink in Fiji."

"I'll stay here until I see you on board," he told her, although the quinjet was already moving further away.

"You're not dropping me at the door after a date," Nat scoffed. "I can take it from here. I need you in Nadi explaining this to ATC, got it?"

"Yes, Ma'am," he said reluctantly. The quinjet peeled off, making a wide right turn towards the south.

The harpoon seemed to be holding just fine, So Nat braced herself against the side of the plane with her feet so that she could work on the cargo door. The door opened in – a safety feature to guard against explosive decompression. If the lock broke, the greater pressure inside the plane would force the door to remain shut – which was going to make it very difficult for Natasha to get inside. She began pulling tools out of her belt. She would have to hammer a series of hydraulic wedges into the space between the door and the frame, and then wait while the air bled off.

When she activated them, however, the door swung open at once.

After the transponder and the autopilot, that was the third thing in quick sequence that set off an alarm in Natasha's head. If the door opened easily, that meant the inside of the plane was not pressurized. Natasha could probably manage, at least for a while, but ordinary people would lose consciousness quickly. Was that why she hadn't been able to see anybody in the windows, because they were all asleep from hypoxia?

In a way that was almost a relief – it meant that the hijackers, too, might be unconscious and Nat could easily land the plane at Nadi. On the other hand, how had it happened? A plane ought to sound a warning if it lost pressure, and if there were _any_ capable pilot on board they would know they had to land as soon as possible.

Nat swung herself inside, disconnected her line, and shut the cargo door again. For a moment she leaned on the cold metal, breathing heavily. The cargo compartment wasn't lit, but she could tell it must be full of mail – through the stale smell of the air in her oxygen mask she could detect the scenes of paper and ink. If everybody on board were unconscious, all she had to do was get to the cockpit.

She straightened up, took a couple of deep breaths of oxygen, and turned on her wrist flashlight.

The blueprints had shown a hatch that allowed flight attendants to access the cargo hold in case of a fire. Natasha found it and climbed up on top of a cargo container to push it open. There was a carpet on top of it, but that was easy to move, and she climbed up in the rear kitchen area of economy class, around the 48th row of seats.

The first thing she saw there was the shape of a flight attendant – a plump black woman with her many braids gathered into a ponytail, unconscious on the floor despite the breathing mask on her face. The masks that dropped from the ceiling for passengers and flight attendants on a commercial jet contained ten to twelve minutes of oxygen, produced by a chemical reaction. Those would have run out hours ago. Nat checked the pulse in the woman's throat and found it weak, but detectable. There was still time to save these people if she could bring the plane to a lower altitude.

Before she did anything else, however, she was going to find the Barton family. She didn't know if anybody had told Clint about any of this yet, but she wanted her first message to _him_ to be that Laura and the kids were okay.

As the documents had noted, the plane was only half-full, but she had to check every row. Natasha started at the back, where a young Chinese woman was all alone in row 61, stretched out across four seats with a blanket over her, and no mask on. She'd probably been taking a nap when the trouble started, Natasha thought, and had never even realized anything was wrong.

From there, Nat worked her way up, row by row. The fact that economy class had two aisles made it slower. Although there were a few passengers slumped in the aisles and one woman half in and half out of washroom, the vast majority were in their seats with the oxygen masks on their faces. It was a little eerie, as if all these people had simply sat down and accepted their fate.

Finally, she found what she was looking for in the 35th row, just at the back of the wing on the right side. Laura was in the aisle seat, leaning back with her head to the left and her eyes shut as if peacefully asleep. She was breathing shallowly, her pulse weak but steady. On her right, Lila was curled against her mother, draped over the arm of the seat in a way that would probably be very uncomfortable when she woke – Nat gently moved her so she could fold the arm rest away and allow the little girl to rest her head in Laura's lap. Cooper, in the window seat, was against the wall with his eyes shut.

Nat shut her eyes and allowed herself a sigh of relief. They were alive. She could get them home to Clint safely.

She left them where they were and moved forward through economy plus, to the staircase that led up into business class. The cockpit access would be there. After 9/11 planes had been fitted with bulletproof cockpit doors and a number of other security measures to keep passengers from getting in, but Natasha knew she could come up with a way around that.

There'd been no sign yet of any hijackers, and she was _almost_ sure they, too, were asleep – but not _completely_ sure. As she climbed the stairs, she kept alert, constantly looking around for hostiles. She reached the top and peeked over the edge of the railing into the upper deck.

The attack came from behind. Out of the corner of her eye, Natasha _just_ saw a human figure vault over the railing and wrap its legs around her neck. She fell forward, but caught herself and pushed back, preferring to fall _down_ the stairs if she fell – that would hurt more, but hopefully get the other person off her. She vaguely made out dark hair and white teeth as they fell to land in a tangle of limbs at the foot of the steps.

Natasha dug the the tips of her stun gun into the attacker's chest. She heard the snap and smelled the electricity, but it had no effect. The other person – a woman – was wearing a bullet-proof vest under her flight attendant's uniform. The shock couldn't penetrate the kevlar.

If it had just been the one person, Natasha could probably have coped, but as she got up, a second attacker slipped a strap over her head from behind. She grabbed at it, but the unseen individual quickly pulled it tight, while the dark-haired flight attendant ripped off Natasha's oxygen mask. Even if she hadn't, the mask wouldn't have done Nat any good with her airway closed off. Bright spots danced in front of her eyes, and she slipped away into blackness.

* * *

She came to in darkness, with a splitting headache, and tried to take stock of her surroundings. She was on the floor in a tiny, cramped space with her cheek resting against metal. It smelled of bleach and scented soap... jasmine. Her hands and feet were tied. Above her and to the right, a tiny bit of sunlight was coming in and illuminating brushed metal cabinets. It was difficult to breathe, and the floor was vibrating in time with a far-off rumbling sound, with a definite sensation of motion. As she lay there, swallowing hard against the desire to vomit, the entire room tilted to the left. That changed the angle of the light, and the beam fell across a paper napkin lying a few inches from Natasha's face. On the corner of it, she could see the embossed Air Aurora logo.

The washroom. She was tied up on the floor of the airplane washroom. The plane was still in flight, and making a turn – its original heading had been northeast, so it was now adjusting to the west... assuming this was the first course change it had made, which was not necessarily so.

Nat concentrated for a moment on wiggling her hands out of their bonds, but couldn't do it. What was holding her wasn't a rope or a zip tie, it was some form of handcuff, not the same shape as she was used to escaping from. Her stings and her guns had been taken away. A bit of squirming told her that several other items on her person had been removed, including her pepper spray and the taser disks she kept behind her belt buckle. They hadn't found the two emergency ones inside her collar, though, so she had those. She needed to get out, and once she was out the first thing she'd have to find was oxygen.

Whoever had done this knew their enemy – they'd known what her arsenal was like and had been prepared for it, and now that they had her they were changing the plane's course. Had it all been a trap? If so, Natasha had walked right into it.

" _Ona ochnulas'_ ," said a soft voice outside. " _Ya mogu slyshat' yeye_." That was Russian. _She's awake. I can hear her_.

Natasha quickly sat up – she might be dizzy, not to mention trussed like a pig on a spit, but she was going to look her captors in the eye when they opened the door. The light that came in as the door swung out was for a moment utterly blinding, but once her eyes adjusted, she made out three women standing outside.

They were all dressed, as she'd expected, as Air Aurora flight attendants, in white pants suits with neckerchiefs in the airline's colours of yellow, navy, and orange. All were wearing oxygen supplies – a tank on a belt and a tube down the nose that looked more like hospital equipment than anything found on an airplane. The one on the left had long black hair in a ponytail. She was the one who'd attacked Natasha at the top of the steps. Her nametag said _Milly_. In the middle was a tiny, freckled brunette with a pixie cut. _Elaine_ , the nametag said. On the right was a woman with hair so blonde it was almost white, tucked up in a tidy bun. _Trina_.

" _Zdravstvuyte_ , Natalia," said the one with the pixie cut. "Do you know who we are?"

Natasha's eyes narrowed. Of course she knew who they were – she'd slept in the same bedrooms with these women for years. They'd been her best friends at a time when there'd been no difference between those and her worst enemies. " _Zdravstvuyte_ , Yelena," she replied to Yelena Belova, and nodded once each to her companions: Kamila Ibrayev and Triinu Kaasik.

"Oh, she _remembers_ us!" Yelena smiled and clapped her hands in imitation of childish delight. "We were worried you'd forgotten, or that they'd brainwashed it out of you."

"No, I remember," said Nat. She felt the plane tilt again. "Where are we going?"

"You're smart," Yelena replied. "You figure it out."

Nat bit her lip. "Vladivostok," she decided. "Air Aurora flies there anywhere, so the plane won't stand out like it would in Khabarovsk or Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk."

"Good _girl_ ," said Yelena with a smirk. Nat clenched her jaw, but did not otherwise respond. Yelena had always been a gloater, and Natasha wasn't going to give her the pleasure of a reaction. "And what will we do with you once we get you there, smarty-pants?"

"I imagine you're going to take me to Moscow, where you'll either re-educate me, try me for treason, or just execute me," Nat replied. Any were a possibility... they might even try all three.

Yelena nodded. "We'll let Madame decide, once she's seen you for herself."

Natasha took a deep breath. She was going to escape from this, obviously, but she had to prioritize. "I have one condition," she said.

"No tricks," said Yelena. "No conditions."

"I want you to land in either Japan or South Korea, and let the passengers off before we go on," Natasha said. "If you do that, I'll come quietly. If you don't," she added, "I will fight you every step of the way."

"You're in no position to fight anybody, and definitely not to make demands," Yelena sneered. "How's it feel, Natalia?"

Natasha ignored the question. "Letting the passengers off won't take long, and I've got a friend who can arrange for you to refuel." Fury would do as she said if it would save the civilians on board.

"No friends," Yelena repeated. "No tricks, no conditions, and no requests." And with that she shut the bathroom door, leaving Natasha bound in the dark.


	3. Chapter 3: Volgograd

It was unseasonably cold that spring day in 1986 when the representatives arrived. There'd been wet snow overnight but it had turned to rain in the morning, leaving the streets slushy and slippery, and a damp chill in the air that the building's aging heaters could do very little to dispel. The headmistress of the Gogolya State Home for Girls had hoped the unpleasant weather would keep her guests from making their scheduled appointment, but they were on the step promptly at ten AM. There were eight men in white uniforms, and one woman – a tall, elegant individual with blonde hair tied up under her ushanka, and a white coat with a thick fur collar.

There were no pleasantries. The headmistress let them in, and the woman handed her coat and hat to a subordinate who took them without a word. Underneath she was dressed in a pale gray tweed suit with a skirt to just past her knees, and white boots. The only splash of colour was a malachite-green silk scarf tied around her neck, which only served to make her already pale face look even more unearthly. The headmistress did not know this woman's name. She'd never heard her addressed as anything but _Madame_.

"Where are the new girls?" Madame asked. Everybody else's breath was visible in the cold and damp, but hers was not.

The headmistress stood up as straight as she dared. "I want you to know," she said, "that I do this with the most strenuous objections."

"Objections?" Madame narrowed her gray-blue eyes. "Do you object to the glory of the Soviet State, Comrade Kiryanova?"

"I object to your treatment of these girls," the headmistress replied. "I know where you're taking them, and I know what you do to them there." She kept her trembling hands behind her back, and hoped her voice wasn't shaking as much as she thought it was.

Madame leaned closer. "These girls," she said, "will serve a destiny far greater than yours, and you must not allow your petty jealousy to deny them that. Now, show me the new arrivals."

The headmistress met the other woman's gaze as steadily as she could, but there would not have been any real way to argue with Madame, even if she hadn't had armed men with her. She paused a moment to self-consciously rearrange her shawl – hand-knitted by her grandmother, and in places needing repair – around her shoulders, then headed into the room where the children were beginning their day's studies.

There was very little time for play in a state home like this one. Even as young as three and four years old, children had to be taught to be good citizens, productive workers, and strong members of the Party. These little girls were no exception – they were being taught their alphabet and numbers, and those whose attention drifted might receive a scolding or a rap on the knuckles. The headmistress prided herself on her institution molding well-behaved, well-educated young women... but even then, they were supposed to be _young women_. Not what Madame and her followers would make out of them.

"The new ones are at the far end, the ones from Ukraine," she said, pointing to the last table. The girls there were quieter than most, and often smaller – some were only a year or two old. "They lost one or both parents in Chernobyl. Some of them are recovering, others are still in shock." She glanced sideways at her guests. "The officials thought you might be interested in them, since they should probably never have children of their own anyway. The exposure may have caused mutations."

Madame said nothing. She walked up and down the table, past the row of little girls who were carefully copying shapes or scribbling in notebooks their tutors had given them. A few looked up as the stranger passed, but none spoke.

"That one's had a high dose," said the headmistress, indicating one in particular. "You can see she's lost half her hair. The one third from the end broke her wrist. She tried to climb down from a moving vehicle to go back and get the family dog, but they weren't allowed to take animals with them."

Madame wrinkled her nose in disapproval of such sentiment.

"The one at the end on the left side, she's been badly traumatized," the headmistress went on. She did this every time, trying to make each child seem as undesirable as possible. Sometimes it worked. Mostly it didn't. This time, however, she had high hopes. The children from Chernobyl were already weak and sickly – and if Madame's attention remained on their infirmities, she might not think to look at the others. "She lost both her parents and a stepbrother. She hasn't spoken since they brought her here," she added. "We know she _can_ speak, but she doesn't want to. She does as she's told, though."

Madame raised the chin of the girl in question – a thin child, with freckled cheeks and feathery brown hair – and studied her for a moment. Her eyes were empty, as if whatever soul the girl had possessed had died with her family in the nuclear fire. "That could be useful," Madame said, and turned to her underlings. "Take this one, and the twins there, the ones who are taller than the others."

The men moved to lift the children from their chairs. The freckled one went silently. One of the twins whimpered, and the other kicked and struggled but was soon scolded into silence. The men put a wristband on each child, and carried them out the door, while the headmistress looked away. Orphans of the accident had left every State Home between Kiev and Novgorod overflowing with unwanted children, and she would not have to make up as many extra beds on tables and floors that night – but those girls deserved a better fate.

"I'd like to look at the rest," said Madame.

"You've seen the rest," the headmistress told her. "They were here last time."

"I'd like to look at them again," Madame replied coldly.

The headmistress could do nothing but stand back and watch as Madame paced up and down the rows of tables. She paused here and there to study round little faces, watch penmanship, or read a paragraph over a child's shoulder. Despite the chill, the headmistress felt a bead of nervous sweat roll down her back. She couldn't escape the fear that Madame was _counting_ them. Perhaps it was only her own paranoia. Hopefully, she would soon be satisfied and leave.

"Where is the last?" asked Madame.

The headmistress tried not to show any reaction, although inside she felt as if she'd been suddenly pushed off a cliff. "What other?"

"You're supposed to have one hundred and seventy-two children under your care here," said Madame. "I count one hundred and seventy-one."

"Perhaps there was an error in the records," the headmistress suggested. "Or you counted wrong." In her head she begged God and Saint Jerome to make this woman leave.

Madame turned to the men. "Search the building," she ordered. "Tear up the floor if you have to." They immediately spread out to do so, and Madame turned to meet the headmistress' gaze. Her ice-blue eyes were as empty as the silent girl's brown ones. The threat was unspoken, but hung in the air regardless, heavy and solid as a lead weight.

All the headmistress could do was stand there and pray – and when, after a few minutes of searching, she heard a child's cry, she knew that God had not heard her. When the men returned, two of them were carrying a struggling girl, barely holding on to her although she was no more than two years old. The child kicked and wailed as the men pinned her arms to her sides and yanked her head up by her red hair to force her to look at Madame.

"She was in the pantry," said one of them. "On the bottom shelf, behind bags of flour."

"That one is mine," the headmistress protested. She had to say _something_ , and that was almost true. "My own daughter."

"No, she isn't," snorted Madame. "You have no children and you're not capable of having them. I've seen your medical records. A hysterectomy at the age of twenty-two, to correct untreatable adenomyosis."

"She _will_ be!" the headmistress insisted. "I am adopting her myself. I've already sent in the paperwork." Surely even these monsters had to bow to the law, if they loved the State as much as they claimed they did. "She's not suitable for you. She's disobedient and sensitive, and she asks too many questions!"

"The children will be tested," said Madame, "and those who are not suitable will be placed elsewhere. Take her, too," she ordered her men.

But that was more than the headmistress could bear – she couldn't possibly watch this sweet, rebellious, and endlessly curious child taken away to become a machine. She dropped her shawl and rushed forward to wrestle the red-haired girl out of the arms of her captors. Before she could reach her, however, Madame put out a leg to trip her. When the headmistress' arms went out to catch herself, Madame grabbed her from behind by the shoulder and upper arm and wrenched them in opposite directions, breaking her collarbone. The headmistress fell to the floor, howling in pain.

Her employees shushed the frightened children and encouraged them to return to their studies. Nobody made a move to help. Nobody dared.

"I trust you have learned your duty to the state," said Madame coldly. "I will see you again next year, Comrade Kiryanova – if you live that long."

* * *

Outside, the rain had turned to snow again. Madame lit a cigarette and waited on the step while her men collected the State Home's records for the four girls they'd taken. It was part of the procedure. They would eliminate every trace – it was important that none of the girls from the Red Room have any connections outside of it.

"Is that everything?" she asked, when the last man emerged with a box of records.

"Yelena Belova and Irina and Ilona Melnik," he said. "And Natalia Romanova."

The corner of an envelope was protruding from the top of one of the folders. Madame pulled it out and read the handwriting on the front: _for Natalia, when she comes of age_. For a moment she considered opening it, but then she put her cigarette to the corner instead and watched coldly as the paper caught fire. "Burn it all," she ordered, "as usual."

She waited until the flames had crawled up the envelope almost to her fingers, and then dropped it in the snow and got in the truck.

The new girls were waiting there. The twins were holding each other, in tears. The red-head Kiryanova had been so determined to save for whatever reason was curled in a ball on the floor, crying. The silent one was sitting by herself with her hands in her lap, unresponsive.

"No crying," Madame told them as she did up her seat belt. "Where you're going, you will have no need for tears."

The children looked up at her, uncomprehending. Oh, but they would learn.

"You were in that place because your parents didn't want you," said Madame. "The poor girls we left behind might be there for years with nobody ever to love them, but you're going to a better place. The State will love you as no human mother could ever love her daughters." She smiled. "If you're good, she will make sure you never want for food or warmth or a place to sleep. And someday, when you've grown up big and strong, you will be able to love and serve her in return."

The engine started, and the truck rumbled away into the swirling snow.

* * *

Twenty-six years later, Natasha Romanov lay curled on the floor of an airplane bathroom, trying to think.

She knew the Red Room had been watching her for years. Natasha had dozens of fake identities, all of which came with histories and paperwork – the Red Room had probably been collecting them, and she'd taken care to lay false trails for them to follow as well. They'd tried to get her back once before, when she'd made the foolish mistake of visiting the old orphanage in Volgograd. Now they'd decided to try again... why now, and why this way?

It had to be the Battle of New York, she decided. Her face had been on the news at least once, when a group of television reporters had met the Avengers outside the diner where they'd gathered for what Thor had called their Victory Feast. The entire rest of the world had seen that, so surely the Red Room agents had, too... maybe they'd decided they just couldn't afford the risk of anybody _else_ digging into Natasha's background, or maybe it had been their confirmation of who she was _really_ working for. Either way, they'd decided the time had come to lay a trap.

Somebody must have seen Natasha buy the phone. The chip she'd put in it, to keep it from being traced to nearby towers, was something she'd stolen from the KGB – if anybody could track that, it was the Red Room. They would have listened in to the calls and texts the phone made, which had told them that somebody important to Nat was on this flight. Had Laura sent the message that the plane had been hijacked, or had the widows done that themselves? Did they know who Laura Barton was, or only that Natasha had been supposed to meet her?

Whatever the case, it was clear that they had no regard for the fate of the passengers. For all Natasha knew, they were planning to have everybody shot when they landed in Vladivostok – if they didn't die of oxygen deprivation on the way. Somebody would have to bring the plane down to ten thousand feet, where there would be enough air for everybody... and in the absence of anybody else to do it, 'somebody' was going to have to be Natasha herself.

She prioritized. The first thing she would have to do would be to get out of her bonds, and the second was to get more oxygen – she wouldn't be able to sustain physical activity on what was available at this altitude. Then she'd have to find weapons.

First things first. Her hands were behind her back, so instead she took a look at the cuffs on her feet. They were chained to each other, and she could feel that they were attached to the ones on her wrists by a metal bar that was intended to keep the two just a bit more than a hand's length apart, so she couldn't pick the locks on the ankle cuffs. Feet were bigger than hands, however, and Nat was good with her toes. Moving slowly and carefully so as not to jingle the metal, she started to wiggle out of her boots.

Once the boots were gone she had to get out of her socks and then, using only her toes, extract the hot wire hidden in the seam of one boot – an old but dependable piece of spy gear. The problem was that if she accidentally activated it in the process, the carpet or her own clothing might start to smolder, which would set off the washroom smoke detector and alert her guards to her escape attempt. She worked as slowly as she dared, stopping frequently for deep breaths to keep her oxygen levels up.

Finally, the wire came free and she was able, with some painful twisting and turning of her arms and legs, to feed it through the cuff on her right wrist. Now all it would take was a quick, sharp tug to activate it.

Her first attempt wasn't quite enough. The second succeeded, but she bumped against the counter and a bottle of hand sanitizer fell into the sink with a clank. Natasha held her breath, waiting.

"I knew you'd try something," Yelena said, and the door opened.

But Natasha's right hand was now free. She whipped the hot wire up and, as Yelena reached for her, wrapped it around the other woman's arm, burning through her white blazer. Yelena hissed through her teeth but did not scream, and headbutted Nat, causing her to fall back into a sitting position on the toilet.

Natasha took a quick inventory. There were two taser discs left, hidden in her collar – but she didn't have time to get them out. Instead, as Yelena stepped towards her, Nat jumped up and caught the other's hand between her shoulder and chin, holding it tight in just the right spot to activate the electricity. Nat had three layers of pleather to protect her from the shock, but Yelena had only one. She twitched as the current flowed into her, then collapsed on the floor. Natasha hit her in the back of the neck with her free hand to make sure she'd stay down.

So far, so good – but she was now down to just one disc, she'd lost the hot wire, and her left hand was still cuffed to her ankles. Kamila and Triinu were still outside the door, and somehow she was going to have to take them both.

With her free right hand, Natasha pulled the other taser disc out of her collar and launched herself as best she could at the first widow to appear in the doorway – Triinu. As she did, she yanked as hard as she could with both legs, hoping the chain on her cuffs would break. It did not, but the cuff itself was forced painfully down over her thumb, and Natasha was able to rip her left hand free, leaving a broad bleeding scrape down her hand. Not pretty, but she'd deal with it later.

She made ready to attack Triinu with the disc, but the blonde woman grabbed her out of the air and threw her against the partition that divided the washroom area from the emergency exits behind her. The thin wall collapsed and Nat rolled across the floor, panting as she came to rest at the feet of a couple of unconscious passengers.

That was a sharp reminder. Whatever else happened, she had to remember that there were over three hundred civilians on this airplane. Those lives were why she was here.

The row behind her had three seats but only two passengers who had activated their oxygen masks. The third mask was just dangling, and there should still be oxygen in the canister above. Natasha jumped to her feet and ripped the whole thing out of the ceiling. She heard the hiss as it activated, and got the mask onto her face moments before Triinu came at her again. The gases inside smelled like something dead but she could feel the buzz as fresh oxygen flowed into her lungs. _Now_ she'd be able to _think_.

Natasha had no more weapons, but the metal bar was still attached to her foot cuffs – she could use that. She rolled back on her shoulders and swung her legs at her attacker, intending to use the extra eight inches of the metal bar to hit her in the face. Triinu dodged by half an inch and grabbed Nat's legs on the way by, so Natasha switched tactics and used her arms instead, grabbing the legs of the seats to pull Triinu off her own feet. Once the blonde was down, Nat rolled over her and got back to her feet as best she could to face Kamila.

Her eyes darted to the left. The emergency exit was right there. If she opened that, she could throw Kamila and Triinu out and let the engines blow them away. It was a long way down.

But that was a solution of last resort. Natasha had made Fury promise her that if SHIELD apprehended any more black widows, he would give them a chance to reform – or at least allow them a fair trial before they were imprisoned or executed. Having extracted that promise from _him_ , Nat could do no less herself.

Because of the cuffs on her feet, Natasha was unable to widen her stance. Kamila could, and understood that this gave her an advantage. So did the fact that she had both hands free, while Natasha had to use one to hang on to the oxygen canister she'd pulled out of the ceiling – the chemical reaction that produced the gas was starting to heat the metal, and she wasn't sure how much longer she'd be able to touch it. The heat might make an effective weapon, though. Kamila didn't appear to be armed, herself – she had the others would have had to go through airport security in order to get on the plane, even if they were supposedly employees. But black widows were taught to improvise.

Kamila jumped up on the arm of a seat and opened an overhead bin. The first item she pulled out was a small wheeled suitcase – this was pink, with Hello Kitty characters on it, but it was also hard-sided and full almost to bursting. Kamila dropped to the floor again, using gravity to give the suitcase an extra burst as she hurled it at Nat.

Natasha somersaulted over it. Her training, grilled into her by years in the Red Room, was to try to wrap her legs around Kamila's neck, but she couldn't do that when her ankles were still cuffed together. Instead, she grabbed the handle and got back to her feet, only to realize that if she threw the suitcase at Kamila, it might hit the elderly man who was unconscious in the seat on the other side of the aisle. All she could do safely was push it away to the rear.

That oxygen canister was _really_ getting hot now.

Kamila took down a second piece of luggage, but kept holding on to this one as she swung it at Natasha. Nat bounced backwards onto her free hand and blocked with her feet. Kamila tried a higher angle. Nat kicked the luggage out of her hands and seized her opportunity to use the canister as a weapon, pushing the hot metal against Kamila's face.

Kamila screamed and grabbed Nat by the hair, throwing her to the ground. The canister was torn off the tube connecting it to Nat's mask, and the sudden cessation of the oxygen made her gasp. Spots began to flicker in her vision again as the metal cylinder rolled away under the seats.

Nat looked around, increasingly desperate. The was a kitchen area at the next cross aisle, up at row 24 – there might be something in there she could use as a weapon, but Kamila was in her way. There was another kitchen aft, at row 45, but that was where Triinu was, and she was now getting to her feet. Natasha couldn't go back into the bathroom, because that was a dead end and Yelena might regain consciousness at any moment.

With no other options open to her, Natasha right right, towards the other aisle. It was a tight squeeze between the first row of seats and the back wall of the central set of washrooms, but it would be difficult for the others to follow her there. Triinu, still unsteady on her feet, didn't even try – but Kamila jumped back up on the seats themselves, and used the backs of them to vault herself over the sleeping passengers and land in the other aisle ahead of Natasha.

That forced Nat to go aft. With her feet still bound, she decided to try a handspring, but Kamila tackled her. Nat rolled over to kick her off, but Kamila pinned her to the floor with her hands on Natasha's wrists and a knee just under her ribs.

"I'd have thought SHIELD would teach you some new tricks!" spat Kamila, then raised her head as Triinu came wobbling up. "Get the door," she ordered.

The other emergency exit was next to them. Triinu stepped over Kamila and Natasha and grabbed the handle.

"I thought Madame was going to deal with me," said Natasha through gritted teeth.

"That was preferable." Kamila dragged Nat to her feet and pushed her against the wall next to the door. "But you know that killing is always an option – especially if there's no other way to complete a mission."

Triinu turned the handle, and wind came howling in.

If ever there were a situation of last resort, it was now. Natasha let her knee collapse, and as Kamila tried to catch her, suddenly straightened up again, driving the back of her head into the other woman's jaw. Kamila cried out and staggered backwards, and when Nat turned she saw blood on her lips from a bitten tongue. She threw herself forward, grabbed Kamila around the legs, and pinned her in turn, twisting her arms up behind her back. Kamila would have to dislocate at least one shoulder to escape the hold, which was something widows _had_ been trained to do. Whatever Natasha was going to do now – and she really wasn't sure – she didn't have a whole lot of time to do it.

And there was still Triinu, who took a couple of steps towards them, then paused.

"What the hell are you waiting for?" Kamila demanded, shouting over the wind.

Triinu licked her lips. "Natalia!" she shouted. "You escaped!"

"Yes, I did!" Natasha said. She'd refused a summons from the Red Room and had gone rogue – something no widow had been able to do since 1946. "If you want out, I'll help you! SHIELD will help you!" she promised.

"I don't want SHIELD!" Triinu said. "I want to disappear!"

"Then I'll help you do that!" Natasha said. "I promise! Just help me save this plane!"

Triinu nodded and grabbed Kamila's ankles. The two of them lifted her off the floor, and Triinu moved as if to throw Kamila out the open door. Natasha had to pull on their captive's arms, which must have hurt, in order to stop her.

"Wait!" she ordered.

"Why?" Triinu demanded. "If we let her live, she'll try to stop us!"

"She's as much of a victim as we are!" Natasha said. "If we're getting out, then we're taking Yelena and Kamila with us, even if we have to drag them! Do you understand?"

"They'll try to kill you! They tried once before!" Triinu reminded her.

Counting today, they'd tried _twice_ , Natasha thought, and the first time they hadn't even been under orders. But killing them herself was what a vigilante would do – Natasha was an agent. She was supposed to have a code of conduct. "They have to go back to SHIELD for trial!" she insisted.

"What do we do with them, then?" Triinu asked.

That was a difficult question. Kamila and Yelena would remain dangerous as long as they were alive and conscious, unless they too changed their their minds and decided to escape. "Cuff them together," Natasha decided. "There should be cupboards in the kitchen that can lock." Those wouldn't lock very _securely_ , certainly no more so than the bathroom, but their options were limited.

She tried not to think of another little girl hiding in a kitchen cupboard. Baba Galina had told her the monsters were coming – and she'd been right.

Natasha and Triinu shut the emergency exit, then got the cuffs off Nat's legs and used them to fasten Kamila's right hand to Yelena's right foot, which was the most awkward arrangement they could come up with. Then they took both of them to the aft kitchen section, where Triinu took the various wires and tools they had hidden about their persons and dropped them in a sink of water to destroy the electronics, while Natasha stuffed them in a cabinet and locked it.

Triinu then pulled a panel from the wall and unwound some wires from the interior of the coffee maker. Natasha quickly figured out what she was trying to do, and helped – they used the remains of the cuff Natasha had broken to secure the wires to the cupboard door lock, and Triinu turned the coffee maker on. With no water in it, it wouldn't make coffee, but it _would_ electrify the metal and give a nasty shock to anybody who tried to open the door.

"All right," said Natasha, inspecting the scrape to her left hand and the burns to her right – both were superficial and could be ignored for now. "Who's flying the plane?"

"Dimitria," Triinu told her.

Dimitria Volkova had been the best pilot of Natasha's class, as well as a master of fighting in small spaces. They were going to need weapons. "Bottles," she said to Triinu.

Triinu nodded and began opening the fridges, while Natasha searched the overhead compartments for duty-free purchases. She found a bottle of wine that would make a decent club, and returned to the kitchen area to find that Triinu had broken two beer bottles to use as knives. Thus armed, they made their way forward.

"You, Kamila, Yelena, and Dimitria," said Natasha. "Anybody else?" She doubted it – black widows rarely worked in groups. They'd never needed more than two for any given situation. Four was overkill.

"That's all," said Triinu.

So Dimitria would be alone in the cockpit – that would give them an advantage. "How did you guys get in?" Natasha asked. Since 9/11, cockpit doors had been made nearly impenetrable. She might learn something now that would be useful to the FAA later. And if Triinu were willing to answer questions, Natasha might also find out how much the Red Room knew about the Barton family.

Triinu smirked. "We went to ask the crew if they wanted coffee. When we brought it, Dimitria spilled it in the co-pilot's lap, and with nobody looking at her, Yelena hit them from behind."

"Where are they now?" Natasha asked.

"In the ocean somewhere," said Triinu with a shrug.

She clearly didn't care, so Natasha just nodded. For the purposes of the widows' mission, the pilots were disposable. The fact that they had families somewhere – parents, spouses, children, friends – wouldn't matter a bit.

"When we're on the ground, I want to go to Haapsalu," said Triinu.

Natasha knew the place – a picturesque city on the west coast of Estonia. "What's in Haapsalu?" she asked.

"My father, I think," said Triinu. "I remember watching him waving goodbye from the deck of a ship."

"What was his name?" asked Nat.

"Kristofer," Triinu said.

"I'll find him for you," Natasha promised, but then both women fellsilent as they came to the top of the stairs, into the business class section. This area was not nearly as cramped as economy and with a bigger and better-appointed kitchen. That might be useful, but for now, their first concern was getting into the cockpit. The door was shut and locked, and Dimitria definitely wouldn't be opening it for an offer of coffee.


	4. Chapter 4: Mayday

The people in business class, like those in economy below, had masks on their faces but their oxygen had run out hours ago. They were all unconscious, and Natasha could only hope they survived long enough for her to get them to a safe altitude.

"Stay back," Triinu ordered.

"You've got the code?" asked Nat.

Triinu nodded. "But there's also a camera to show the pilot who's outside, and she can deny entry if she wants. You have to stay back." She lifted the back of her blazer and tucked one of the broken bottle shanks into the back of her waistband.

"Don't kill her," said Nat, slipping into an empty seat. She wanted the others to have every possible opportunity for the same second chance she'd gotten.

"I won't unless I have to." Triinu rolled her eyes.

Natasha slumped in her seat to keep out of sight, but her hands were tense as she gripped her wine bottle club. She would be on her feet as soon as the door opened, she decided. She needed Triinu's help right now, but the last person a black widow should make the mistake of trusting was another black widow.

Triinu moved her hair a bit to better show off the bruise where Natasha had struck her in the face, bit her own lip to make her mouth bleed, then dabbed her silk scarf in it and wrapped it around one hand. It was only a few short steps but it made her look like she'd had it far worse in the fight than she actually had. Next, she kicked off her high heeled shoes and ran up to punch in the entry code with tears in her eyes, deliberately getting it wrong twice before just pounding on the door with both hands.

"Dimitria!" she called out as if begging. "Dimitria, let me in!"

The door opened, and Dimitria looked out. She was a tiny woman with her hair in a blonde bob, and a rounded face and upturned nose that made people think she was years younger than her real age of nearly thirty. The expression on that girlish face, however, was so ferocious that Triinu actually took a step back, frightened that her smaller colleage would attack her at once.

"She got out, didn't she?" asked Dimitria. "Quick, get inside." She reached for Triinu's arm.

Natasha jumped up, but at that moment Triinu whipped the broken bottle out of her waistband and sliced into the side of Dimitria's neck. Dimitria's eyes went wide in shock and she made a gurgling noise before staggering a couple of steps forward, trying to stop the bleeding with her hands. It was no good, though – Triinu had cut her left carotid artery. Blood was flowing down her front, and she barely made it three feet before collapsing against Triinu. Triinu dropped her to the ground and brought the side of her hand down on the back of Dimitria's neck.

Natasha came running up to intervene, but it was already too late. "You said only if necessary!" she said.

"It was necessary," Triinu replied coldly, and headed into the cockpit.

Natasha retrieved the pilot's headset from Dimitria's fallen body and followed her, wiping the blood away from the microphone with her fingers as she went. There was no sign of any pilot or co-pilot, just a spilled coffee mug on the floor and some dark stains on the seats. The smell of blood seemed to coat the inside of her mouth with a thin layer of metallic sludge. Natasha did her best to ignore it.

"I'm gonna start bringing us down," she told Triinu. She put the headset on and began checking the instruments, getting their heading and fuel consumption.

"I'll get the chutes," Triinu said, and stepped out again. Natasha frowned and looked over her shoulder, to see Triinu opening an overhead bin. What did she want with parachutes? She didn't think they were going to bail out and leave everybody behind, did she? After a moment's hesitation, Nat decided to play it safe. She shut the cockpit door and locked it, then reprogrammed the autopilot for a lower altitude, one where everybody on board would be able to breathe. Once the computer acknowledged that, she reached to take the flight manual off its hook next to the co-pilot's seat.

As she flipped through the pages, looking for instructions on how to change the cockpit entry code, she used her other hand to fiddle with the radio tuner. The first thing she tried was a SHIELD frequency.

"SHIELD Q-12," she said. "This is the Black Widow. I have successfully taken control of AA-113 and am descending to ten thousand feet, over."

She waited for Chiba's reply, but there was only static. Had he already had time to make it to Nadi? If so... she checked their position, and found that with the plane's altered course, heading back towards Asia, they were out of range. They were also far, far away from any airport big enough to handle a plane this size. There was nothing below them but open water for hundreds of miles in every direction.

Chiba was probably frantically trying to get in touch with her, she thought, but his peace of mind wasn't her priority. The passengers were. She switched to a civilian channel.

"Mayday, mayday, mayday," she said, calm and precise as she enunciated the distress call. "This is AA-113. Alfa Alfa One One Three. I have lost pressure in the cabin. My passengers are hypoxic. I need to make an emergency landing as soon as possible."

This time there was a crackle of interference that suddenly dissolved into a voice. "SPA-113!" an excited voice replied. "The whole world's looking for you! This is Pacific control in Guadalcanal. Give us your coordinates and you will have absolute priority, over."

"Good to hear from you, too, Control," said Natasha with a smile. "Fuel shouldn't be a problem but I've got about three hundred and fifty passengers, and they may _all_ need medical assistance. Let me repeat that: medical assistance for as many as three hundred and fifty." Behind her, she heard Triinu knock on the cockpit door. She would have to deal with that, but first she had to finish giving this man the important information. "I wouldn't mind a nice long runway while we're at it. I've landed plenty of planes but this is a big one. Over."

"Rogers," said Control. "Can you make Honiara? We've got two point one kilometers, over."

Natasha grimaced – that was pushing it. "It'll have to do," she said.

The cockpit door opened. Natasha had not yet had the opportunity to actually change the code, so Triinu was able to walk right in, carrying two packed parachutes. She looked as if she were about to say something, but then she heard the tail end of Natasha's conversation with the ground.

"Who are you talking to?" she demanded, surprised and angry.

"Guadalcanal," said Natasha. "I'm getting us a place to land."

"I'll tell them to expect you at Runway Six-Two-Four," said ground control. "Will you need any other emergency services besides medical?" Over."

Triinu dropped the parachutes and snatched the headset off Natasha's ear. "You said you would help me escape!" she said.

"I will!" Nat promised her. She began programming the autopilot for Honiara. "But we have to land somewhere and let the passengers off. We're going to Honiara International Airport in the Solomon Islands."

Triinu grabbed Natasha's wrist and bent it sharply – and this was the left wrist, the one she'd already injured by yanking it out of the handcuffs. "SHIELD will be waiting at Honiara, won't they?" she demanded.

"Only for the passengers," said Natasha. "If you want, I'll have them refuel the plane there and you can fly it anywhere you want. Vladivostok, Estonia, Australia – they won't care. But we _have_ to let the passengers off first." She tried to work her hand free.

Triinu twisted harder, stopping just short of breaking Nat's wrist. "You said you were bringing us down!" she said.

"To an altitude with more oxygen," said Natasha. "I'm not going to crash a plane with three hundred people on board!"

The expression on Triinu's face was of utter incomprehension. "What is _wrong_ with you?" she asked. "You got _out_! For years the Red Room thought you were dead, now you've got the perfect opportunity to disappear again but you're just gonna land, because of a bunch of strangers?"

Triinu had assumed that _bringing us down_ meant _crashing the plane_ , Natasha realized. She thought they were faking their own deaths in order to get a head start.

"There's no point in breaking with the Red Room if we're not going to be better than them," said Natasha.

"You're insane!" Triinu told her. "They will hunt you down to the ends of the Earth! You _know_ that!"

"If you want to bail out, then bail out now," said Natasha. "I'll tell them you're dead."

Triinu shook her head. "Am I supposed to trust you? I know you don't trust _me_ , but Madame made _you_ , too." Her eyes darted down to Natasha's wine bottle club, which she'd left on the floor at the rear corner of the seat. Triinu scooped it up.

Nat thought fast. Having made it into the pilot's seat, she didn't want to leave it again if she didn't have to – she might never get back into it. She had to get Triinu out of the cockpit, however, at on the spur of the moment she could only think of one way to do that. Thus far she'd had the plane in a smooth descent. Now with her free hand she wrenched back on the control stick, bringing the nose up as sharply as she dared.

The plane pitched back, and Triinu lost her balance and had to let go of both Natasha and the bottle as she staggered backwards. Nat stood, grabbed the backs of her own seat and the co-pilot's, and braced against them to kick Triinu squarely in the chest with both feet. The other woman fell and rolled down the sloping business class aisle. Natasha slammed the door and engaged the lock, then wedged herself against it so that Triinu wouldn't be able to open it again without a fight.

Changing the access code hadn't been a priority earlier. It was now. Nat used both arms and one leg to hold the door and reached with the other foot to snag the flight manual from where it had fallen among the dropped parachutes. She scraped it across the floor towards her and picked it up, still doing her best to push the door shut as Triinu tried to open t from outside. As long as her opponent didn't discover something she could use as a battering ram.

"AA-113?" the man in Guadalcanal was trying to get back in contact. "Come in, AA-113!"

Natasha found the instructions and entered the new code. The numbers she chose were Nick Fury's birthday – Triinu wouldn't be able to guess that, because _nobody_ knew when Nick Fury's birthday was, not even Agent Hill. Natasha herself had discovered it only after weeks of detective work, but it had all been worth it to see the look on his face when the clown dropped off the balloon bouquet.

Door secure, she left Triinu to hammer ineffectively and returned to the pilot's seat. This time she buckled herself in, in case Triinu broke the door down and tried to forcibly remove her.

The first thing she did then was correct the plane's attitude, lowering the nose again to return to ten thousand feet. Then she dusted off the radio headset and contacted the ground. "This is AA-113, over," she said, trying not to let the controller hear her panting.

It didn't work. "Do you still have hostiles on board?" the man asked urgently.

Natasha wasn't sure how to answer that. Technically she did, and she wasn't feeling terribly charitable towards them at the moment. If she said yes, however, they would land to find Honiara crawling with police, or even military. Fury might listen to her if she said that the three widows deserved a chance at rehabilitation, but she doubted anybody _else_ would. If it came to a fight, there was a very good chance of civilian casualties. The right person to deal with this was Fury.

"I'm gonna give you a number for an agency that can handle this," Natasha said. "Tell the guy who answers that Nat sent you, and tell him we're going to Honiara. If the police, the army, or Interpol are needed, he'll arrange it."

Chiba would have done it without a second thought, but from this man there was an indecisive pause. Natasha had just asked him to do something very much outside his normal job description – air traffic control ran on standard procedures and strict rules. She had to convince him to trust her.

"Listen," she said. "What's your name?"

"John Matabang Espinoza," he replied.

"I'm... Natalie Rushman," Natasha said. "I work as a legal assistant at Stark Industries in Los Angeles. I was on the flight home when the hijackers took over, but you don't get to be Iron Man's lawyer without learning a few tricks. The number is for a friend of Mr. Stark's who works in the American government. He can call anybody from the cops to the Avengers." The Avengers and SHIELD rated fairly high in public opinion since the Chi'Tauri invasion, so the name-dropping would hopefully reassure him.

"All right," he decided. "Give me the number."

Natasha passed it on. She had considered telling him who she really was, but the Black Widow was a shadowy figure, still fairly new to the public consciousness and with dangerous associations. Iron Man was more familiar and friendly, and people almost always preferred to trust male authority figures over female ones. The identity she'd created for her undercover work ought to still exist – Espinoza would be able to run a background check on her, although he might be puzzled by the lack of any indication that Natalie Rushman knew how to fly a plane.

Triinu was no longer banging on the door. She must have realized that Natasha had changed the password, and retreated to decide what to do next. The problem with locking her out was that it left Nat in control of the plane but not of Triinu herself, and she might do just about anything. Maybe she'd even go downstairs and free Kamila and Yelena, although Natasha doubted it – the black widows weren't kind to traitors. Of course, Kamila and Yelena might also manage to free _themselves_ , and they weren't the type who gave up easily. Quitters were of no use to the Red Room.

The safest thing, really, would have been to do it Triinu's way and just kill the others. That was what Natasha had been trained to do, and as she'd told Triinu, she had to be better than that.

"Natalia!" she heard a shout.

Nat looked up at a small screen, where a feed from the security camera showed what was outside the cockpit door. At first she saw nothing but the bloodstained carpet and Dimitria's fallen body, but a moment later a stocking foot kicked Dimitria's arm out of the way, and Triinu appeared in the camera's field of view. She was carrying a body over her shoulder – a child of about seven or eight – and had a shard of broken bottle glass in her hand.

"Natalia!" she repeated. "Open this door!"

The boy was not Cooper Barton – but he was still somebody's child. Natasha turned on the PA system. "I am _not_ turning you in," she said. "I told you, I'm going to land and let the passengers off. After that I don't care what you do. Just put the kid down and be reasonable."

"You're going to ditch the plane," Triinu ordered. "If we land and run, they'll look for us. You _know_ they will."

"SHIELD can protect you," said Natasha.

"I don't _want_ SHIELD! I don't want anything to do with SHIELD!" Triinu insisted. "You stupid bitch, you don't even know what SHIELD _is_!"

"If we ditch this plane, the passengers will die," said Natasha. "Don't you think you've got enough blood on your hands?"

"If the passengers mean so much to you, then don't make me start killing them!" Triinu let the child's body slither off her shoulders and then held him up with her improvised knife at his neck. "Open the door," she ordered. "You have ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven."

Once again, Natasha had to do something immediately. A moment ago, she'd thrown Triinu out of the cockpit with a steep climb. Maybe the best weapon she had was the one in her hands – the airplane itself. It couldn't do the stunt flying of a fighter or a quinjet, but it could probably be pushed a lot further than most people realized. If she went into a dive, Triinu might fall on top of the child and injure him by accident, so Natasha pulled back on the stick again, putting the plane into a second steep climb. On the screen she saw Triinu stumble backwards again, dropping the child on top of Dimitria's body as she did.

But they couldn't climb _too_ high. Nat had to stay at a safe altitude and let the passengers wake up. Once they'd come to, she would have allies against the other widows, and their sheer numbers would give them an advantage. She leveled out again, then flipped on the _fasten seat belt_ light – just in case anyone had already started coming around – and cranked the column to the left. Commercial jets weren't supposed to roll more than sixty degrees. She would see what this one could do.

Both the ocean horizon in the window and the artificial one within the cockpit turned counter clockwise through thirty degrees, then sixty, then ninety. Nat could hear unsecured objects falling in the cabin, and on the screen the bodies of both Dimitria and the child rolled out of sight. The angle reached a hundred and twenty degrees, nearly upside-down, and the control stick started shaking while a computerized voice chanted _stall... stall... stall..._

Nat didn't dare do a full aileron roll. The instruments indicated that she was losing altitude already. She decided to use that, and put the plane into a dive so that the g-forces would throw Triinu to the back of the cabin.

God, she hoped that kid was all right. She would make Fury pay his medical bills if he survived. If he didn't... well, she would have to deal with that. With all the red in her ledger, what was one more child?

* * *

The day was sunny but the wind was cold outside of Larkino, stinging the cheeks and numbing the fingers. Knitted hats and mittens would have been much appreciated, but there weren't any to be had at the moment – nor were there boots with grip, despite the slippery crust that had formed on top of yesterday's snow. The girls were out in thin shoes and light jackets. Anything more would have to be _earned_.

Today's way of earning it was an obstacle course. The girls, all between the ages of seven and nine, were instructed to run over open ground, crawl through culverts, climb walls, cross the Mezenskaya Pizhma, and wiggle into an abandoned building to plant an imaginary bomb. If they didn't reach the target before the timer ticked down to zero, chemicals in the dummy bombs would give their carriers a nasty burn. One of the staff had protested, but Madame had told him that a real bomb would not wait just because the individual carrying it was a child.

Normally there were twenty-eight girls. Today there were only twenty-five. Nobody dared to ask what had happened to the other three.

Natalia was not even thinking about them right now. Her entire attention was on the timer slowly counting down as she pushed it ahead of her through a narrow, damp concrete pipe, full of the smells of dirt and sewage. Her fingers and toes were numb and there were ice crystals forming in her eyelashes, but she couldn't stop to try to warm herself. She had less than five minutes left to make it to the other end. Natalia would not be the _first_ to deliver the payload, but she was determined to get it done.

After the men had taken her away from Baba Galina, the woman called _Madame_ had looked at Natalia Romanova and snorted that she was soft and fat, and would fall dead from exhaustion within a week. Natalia herself had taken that to mean that if she could do what Madame asked of her without collapsing, she would be allowed to go free. So she had spent the last four years pushing herself further and harder every day – she knew she was not the strongest or the fastest, but she was determined to be the _toughest_. Madame would not break her, and she would pass the tests and return to the nearest thing to a home she'd ever had.

That had been the assumption of a three-year-old. Natalia was a lot older now, in body but even more so in spirit. She knew that she would never see Baba Galina again, or get to read Mama's letter that had been left for her. By now, however, her determined work ethic had become an ingrained part of her personality. Keep going. Fall down, get up again. Walk when she couldn't run, and crawl when she couldn't walk. Pass every test no matter what it took.

She'd once hoped to see something change in Madame when she succeeded, to see the beginnings of at least _respect_ , if never _affection_ – but Madame was made of stone, and had no concept of such gentle emotions. She watched all the girls with the exact same impersonal blue stare. If she had favourites, she never let on. If there were any she _disliked_ , she never showed that, either. She was as cold and empty as the Siberian wastes where they practiced, while all the while she insisted that she loved them.

"Girls!" a voice crackled in Natalia's radio. "Leave your bombs and return to base at once!"

Natalia scowled – she was _so close_ to the goal! She didn't want to give up now, but the first thing you learned in the Red Room was _never_ to disobey an order. Since she was closer to the far end of the culvert, she pushed her way through the last few feet and left the bomb there, then climbed up the embankment and took off across the field to return to the row of trailers where the girls and their caretakers were camped.

There, with the cold wind whistling through the structures, she fell into line with her classmates. They had a usual order they stood in, to make them easier to count, and as she took her own place Natalia noticed that there was still no sign of the three missing girls. That was not exactly unusual – girls did disappear from time to time. There'd originally been thirty-one in this particular class, but three had already gotten too ill, too tired, or too injured to continue, and had been _placed elsewhere_ , in Madame's disquieting phrasing.

The three who had vanished today, however, were particularly worrisome to Natalia in particular. They were the three girls from Volgograd – Yelena Belova, and the twins Irina and Ilona – who had come from the same State Home as Natalia herself. If all three of _them_ had been _placed elsewhere_ , could it be that Natalia herself was next?

There was one possible source of comfort and that was that all three of them had come from Chernobyl in the Ukraine, while Natalia had been born in Volgograd. Maybe the other three had fallen ill because of the nuclear accident. Maybe Natalia was safe.

Then, however, the door of the largest trailer opened and the girls came out, one by one. Irina and Ilona were first, shivering in their uniforms. They hadn't even been able to keep warm by moving around, as the girls outside had. Behind them was Yelena – and _she_ was in a winter coat with a scarf and boots, looking rosy-cheeked and very pleased with herself.

Natalia exchanged a worried glanced with Triinu, on her left. Everybody in the class knew that when somebody was shown _that_ kind of favour, it was bad news for the rest of them.

Last of all was Madame, dressed in her trademark white fur and green scarf. She smiled, although it was a smile as cold and unfeeling as any of her other expressions, and put her hands on Yelena's shoulders.

"Girls," Madame said, "do you know why you're here?"

"To serve the State!" they replied in unison. From their first day in the Red Room, they had been told that this was their destiny.

"And is there any greater honour a young lady can aspire to," Madame asked, "than that of furthering glorious Soviet supremacy?"

"No, Madame!" the girls chorused.

Madame nodded. "Wouldn't it be silly," she said, "if there were some among you who didn't _want_ to be Soviet heroes? Yet it seems there are." She looked at the twins, who were huddling up to one another on her right. At a nod from Madame, the trainers moved in to forcibly separate them. Both girls whimpered and reached out for each other, but could do nothing against the adult men who pinned their arms behind their backs.

"Fortunately," Madame went on, "there are also those who aspire to greater things. Yelena here told the dormitory supervisor that she had heard Irina and Ilona plotting to run away together. This was foolish for many reasons – we're in the middle of nowhere, without another human being for miles. The weather is cold, they had no food to take with them, and they would have died after a few days, so really, they're very lucky that Yelena told me. The most foolish thing of all, however, is that they thought there could be anything better than what we're doing here, which is serving the State and the Party. For her good deed in reporting their mischief, Yelena will be rewarded – and for their stupidity in trying to leave, the twins will be _punished_."

A shiver ran through the girls. They had all, at some point, been punished for a transgression. It was always worse than they expected. It might be extra torture training, or forced sleeplessness, or the awful sensory deprivation chamber... all things they had to go through anyway, but things none of them wanted to do more often than absolutely necessary.

"Madame?" asked Yelena.

"Yes, Yelena?" the woman asked. Her tone of voice should have been kind, but it was all wrong. It sounded artificial and overdone, like the red smile painted on the face of a clown.

Yelena smiled viciously. "I think they should be punished by running the obstacle course _naked_!" Yelena said viciously.

Madame gave an approving nod. "That is a marvelous idea!" she said. "The rest of you will continue this exercise tomorrow – for today, you will all come inside for an extra English class and a review of your capitalist currencies." She took her hands off Yelena's shoulders. "Remember, girls... the State loves you, and it will always bring you home again. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Madame!" the girls said.

Madame turned and went back inside. The girls trooped after her, and Natalia breathed a very private sigh of relief. She was not in danger, then – it was only a coincidence, and the fact that all three spoke the same dialect of Ukrainian, that had gotten the Chernobyl girls in trouble. She would have to watch herself in the coming weeks, though. With two of the four from Volgograd having tried to run away, Madame and the trainers would surely keep an eye on Natalia for a while, just in case.

The twins did not come to supper that night, nor were they in their beds that evening. In the morning, the trainers acted as if there were nothing amiss, so everybody else did, too. Everybody except Yelena, who sat and ate her extra ration with a smug smile on her face.

* * *

Natasha left the plane in its dive for as long as she dared, then pulled quickly out of it, turning right-side-up again to let everything settle and reduce the strain on the engines. More warnings were blaring now, lights flashing and voices delivering stall and terrain warnings. They were only a thousand feet above the ocean, which was not nearly enough for such a big plane. As she righted the aircraft, Natasha spotted a fishing boat out of the corner of her eye. She wondered what the people on board were thinking. Were they terrified, convinced a plane was about to crash on top of them?

"Are you willing to _listen_ to me now?" Nat asked over the PA system. "I am going to _help_ you, Triinu, I promise I am... although you're not exactly making me want to. But I have to help these passengers first. That's why I'm here. That's how you _knew_ I'd be here, because there was something on this flight I had to save! Let me do that, and you can go anywhere you want."

Nothing moved on the security camera screen, and Natasha began to think perhaps her acrobatics had knocked Triinu out. Then the phone that allowed the crew to communicate with the cockpit rank, and Natasha picked it up.

"Are you ready to be reasonable?" she asked.

"Are _you_?" Triinu replied.

"I'm being perfectly reasonable!" Natasha informed her. "I'm trying to get the passengers on the ground because there is no reason at all why they should have to die. If you want to fake _your_ own death, I know people who..."

"No," Triinu interrupted. "You just want to see me thrown in prison, or brainwashed by Nazis like you!"

Natasha bristled. "Maybe I _will_ take you in," she said. "Just so you can call the heads of SHIELD Nazis to their faces!" Where the hell had that come from? During her time in the Red Room Natasha had heard Americans called a lot of things, but _Nazis_ was a new one.

"Now _you_ listen to _me_ ," said Triinu. "Every person on this plane is my hostage. I want you to..."

Natasha pulled the nose up again. She didn't climb far this time, just enough to remind Triinu whose hands were on the wheel.

"I'm sorry," she said over the intercom. "What was that about _you_ having hostages? I'm flying the plane. That makes you _my_ hostage. Now if you can't cooperate like you said you _wanted_ to, at least sit down and stop making me wish I'd dropped _you_ out the door into the ocean."

She let go of the button and focused for a few moments on making sure all the systems on board were still okay while waiting for the phone to ring again. When after a few minutes, it had not done so, Natasha began to get worried.

Then a warning light came on.

Natasha frowned and looked closer. The light was telling her that somewhere on board, a door was open. What was Triinu doing? The parachutes were still in the cockpit with Natasha, but with four widows originally on board they must have had more than two. Perhaps they'd even had five, since they had probably figured if they had to bail out they would take Natasha with them. If Triinu had jumped, then at least she was no longer Natasha's problem... but if she were up to something else, then there might be a whole new set of problems again.

She checked her position. Still two hours from the Solomons. That was a long time for things to go wrong in.

The warning light went out.

Natasha's breath caught. If Triinu had jumped, she could hardly have closed the door behind her. Something else must be going on down there. It wouldn't be the passengers or stewardesses doing anything – they wouldn't be opening and closing doors. Either Triinu had thrown something (or somebody) out, or Yelena and Kamila had escaped and were up to mischief of their own. Natasha didn't dare leave the pilot's seat to find out. She was going to have to ask.

She turned on the PA system again. "What are you doing down there?" she demanded, and waited for an answer.


	5. Chapter 5: A Long Fall

The next forty-five minutes went by very slowly. Natasha continued to watch her instruments as she flew low over the ocean, waiting for the alarm that would tell her the plane had been sabotaged and they were going down. It didn't come, though, and as the time passed she began to hope that maybe all three of the remaining widows had bailed out. The door could have drifted shut on its own, closing hard enough for the plane's sensors to detect the seal. Natasha's luck wasn't usually that good – but she could hope.

"Guadalcana Tower," said Natasha, "this is AA-113. Alfa-Alfa-One-One-Three, I'm about seventy-five minutes out from the Solomons. Over." Just an hour and a quarter, and this would all be done.

"Roger AA-113," said Espinoza. "We've got emergency vehicles waiting, and we have word from an American search and rescue organization that reinforcements are on the way. The man in charge told us to see if you have any other requests, and to assure you that, uh, apparently the US Government will cover the costs." Espinoza sounded like he didn't know what to think about that. "Over."

Natasha bit her lip, trying to think what she might need. She didn't know who else was still on board. After extracting that promise from Fury she was loathe to turn the other widows over to an organization that would imprison them or send them back to Russia, where they would surely be punished severely for failing to complete their mission. Considering the distances involved, Fury probably wouldn't be able to have more than a very small, ill-prepared group of agents on site by the time she got there.

Triinu hadn't quite stretched Nat's charity to the breaking point, but now the circumstances did. "I'll need a SWAT team," she decided. "And a bomb squad, just in case."

"Yes, Ma'am," said Espinoza. "Just to be clear, do you wish to declare an emergency?"

"Yes," Natasha said. "It's a very slow emergency at the moment, but yeah, better safe than sorry."

"All right. Don't worry," he promised. "We'll have everything waiting for you beside the runway."

Beside, Natasha noted. They were worried the jumbo jet, its tanks still heavy with explosive fuel, would go right off the end.

"As long as we're talking," Espinoza said, "can I ask you something? It's not relevant to the situation, I'm just curious."

"Sure, go ahead," Natasha said with a shrug. She couldn't promise she would answer – but she was good at not answering questions.

"Where did a lawyer who put herself through Harvard by modeling learn how to fly a 747?"

Nat laughed. She liked this guy – he was clearly a critical thinker, attentive to details. Good traits for an air traffic controller. "Well, like I said," she told him, "you'd be amazed what you pick up when you work for Tony Stark. This one time..."

She'd been about to tell a made-up anecdote based on an incident that had been in the briefing materials SHIELD had given her before her undercover assignment at Stark's – a story with just enough truth to be checked – when the plane was rattled by an explosion. It wasn't a bigblast, but it was literally right behind her, shaking the controls out of her hands and rattling the windscreen glass. Natasha quickly grabbed the stick again and made sure the plane was still responding to commands before she did anything else.

When she turned to look at the security screen again, all she could see was white smoke. After a few minutes it cleared, and Nat made out a red object taped to the lower left side of the door. As that a fire extinguisher? A moment later this second bomb went off, too.

The cockpit door of a 747 was built to survive a grenade, but this was a carefully calculated assault on the lock and hinges, by people who had thoroughly familiarized themselves with how it was built. The door didn't come off, but the lower half of it bent inwards, and somebody outside began hammering on it with something heavy.

"AA-113! What's going on up there?" asked Espinoza.

"Can't talk now!" said Nat. She pitched the nose up again, hoping to force the attackers away from the door.

It didn't work. When Natasha checked the security camera again, she found that Yelena and Kamila had made themselves harnesses out of parts from another parachute, and were now using a laden meal cart as a battering ram. They'd tied the cart to the doors of the washroom and crew compartment outside the cockpit using bungee cords, and even with the plane in a climb, the elastic and their muscles could still throw it against the door hard enough to cause more damage.

Eventually, even the armored cockpit door could not take any more such punishment. It sprang open, and the cart burst through to fall over the discarded parachutes still lying on the floor. The cart toppled, spilling its contents across the central control panel – bottles of wine, cans of soda, buckets of ice, anything the other widows had been able to find that was heavy. Nat made sure nothing hit the throttles, then grabbed the nearest ice bag with one hand while checking her seat belt with the other. No matter what happened, she decided, setting her jaw, she wouldnot relinquish control of the plane. Not while she was alive.

"Got you!" Yelena said triumphantly, grabbing Nat by the hair.

Natasha hit her in the face with the ice bag. It was an awkward stroke at that angle, and Yelena shrugged it off easily.

"Kamila!" barked Yelena, ripping the bag out of Nat's hands.

The two women seized Natasha by the wrists. She struggled, but even the largest of airplanes had only a tiny, cramped cockpit. There was no room to move. Yelena cut the straps of the seatbelt with a pair of safety scissors, and they dragged Nat bodily out of the chair. Even once her legs were free she didn't dare kick, for fear she'd hit some vita part of the plane's controls. The lives of the passengers were still in her hands.

God damn it... she should have killed them when she'd had the chance.

"I'll deal with Natalia," said Yelena. "You call for Plan B!"

"But we've got her now!" Kamila protested.

"I'm in charge!" Yelena snarled. "And I say call for Plan B!"

Together they hurled Natasha out into the aisle. She started to get up, but then Yelena hit her in the back of the head with a wine bottle. The glass broke, and cold alcohol spilled down Natasha's back. It wasn't quite enough to knock her out – Clint liked to say that Nat had the hardest head of anybody he'd ever met, including Nick Fury – but for a moment her vision dimmed, and the pain was blinding. When everything cleared she found Yelena rolling her over, pinning her wrists to the ground with her knees as she straddled Natasha's chest.

"Mother Bird, Mother Bird," said Kamila's voice from the cockpit. "We have the bad egg in custody and we're bringing back to the nest."

"I bet that's what you said last time," Nat sneered at Yelena.

"This is Mother Bird," a voice on the radio replied. "Roger that – bad egg coming home.

"I told you to call the Zmeyevich!" Yelena ordered.

Kamila sighed. "We would like to request escort and backup," she said reluctantly. "We're going for Plan B."

"Roger," the radio repeated. "Go for Plan B."

"You always did go running to Madame when things didn't work out the way you wanted," Nat hissed to Yelena. Each of them had their weaknesses. Yelena's temper was hers. If Natasha could make her angry enough...

But perhaps she'd made her too angry. Yelena grabbed a child's backpack out of a nearby seat and hit Natasha in the face with it. Despite its cheerful exterior, decorated with cartoon dinosaurs, the bag was full of hardcover schoolbooks, and probably close to the weight limit for carry-on luggage. Nat saw stars again, and blinked them away just in time to see the backpack coming at her for a second blow.

Now that she'd started, Yelena couldn't seem to stop – years of pent-up hatred were all bursting out at once as she hit Natasha with the bag over and over. In the face, in the chest, in the gut, in the shoulders, until Nat's whole upper body felt like a single mass of bruises. The only time she managed to get a glimpse of Yelena's face, she found it twisted into an enraged grimace as awful and unnatural as one of Madame's smiles.

Finally, the backpack broke. School textbooks spilled out across the floor, and Yelena dropped the torn cloth, panting. Nat knew this was her moment to act. Now, while Yelena was without a weapon, she had to sit up and fight back. Her battered body, however, refused to cooperate. All she could do was lie there with her eyes half-open, breathing heavily and trying to figure out if she'd cracked any ribs. It felt like there were at least two.

"Yelena?" Kamila asked, wary. She was afraid that rage would be turned on her next.

"Have you got the course yet?" Yelena asked, wiping her nose on her blazer like a child.

"Yes. They're sending a chopper," Kamila replied.

"Good." Yelena stood up. "Help me with this."

The two women put a life vest around Natasha's neck and inflated it, then wrapped her up in duct tape. They left her arms free long enough to put them through the straps of a parachute pack, then taped them to her sides. Her head was still spinning as they carried her to the nearest emergency exit, but she began trying to come up with a plan.

Wiggling free of the duct tape would have to wait until after her parachute opened – if she moved around too much before that, she might dislodge the altimeter or timer that would open the chute, and risk hitting the water at over a hundred miles per hour. She would have to get free before she reached the ocean, however, because she wouldn't want to still be wrapped in duct tape and have the parachute come to rest on top of her, leaving her tangled in two layers instead of one. She would need her arms free to cut the parachute line just before splashdown.

But what would she do then? Yelena and Kamila were both putting on their own parachutes, intending to bail out with her. Dimitria was dead, and Triinu probably was, too – the door alarm had almost certainly been set off by Kamila and Yelena throwing her out. "What's going to happen to the plane?" she asked aloud, although she wasn't sure if she were talking to the others or to herself.

"It'll keep going west until it runs out of the fuel," said Kamila.

"These people don't need to die," Natasha protested. Of course, thirty minutes ago she'd thought the other widows didn't need to die, either, and look where that had gotten her.

"They don't need to live, either," Yelena replied.

The passengers were nothing to her – just as the Barton family had been nothing to Loki. They were irrelevant to the mission. Natasha had a mission, too, but was it to save the plane, or had it become to save herself?

Yelena lifted Natasha by the shoulders, and Kamila by the legs, and they carried her to the nearest emergency exit. She should have fought, but her ribs ached and the duct tape still had a firm hold on her. Yelena opened the door and, without even a countdown, they tossed her out into the cold, thin air.

Wind whistled in her ears as she dropped. Nat's reflex was to try to spread her arms and legs so that she could present a bigger surface area and slow her fall, but the tape made that impossible. She couldn't even really change her orientation relative to the ground. The whistle grew to a roar, ripping tears from her eyes as she plummeted towards the whitecaps two miles below.

She wondered whether Triinu had been alive when they'd pushed her out of the plane.

Then the parachute opened, slowing the fall with a jolt. Nat shook her head to clear it as best she could – it was time to start working her way free. She had less than three minutes.

Training took over, and told her arms first. Duct tape was difficult to break, especially when layered, but it did stretch. Her left hand hurt where the tape touched the area she'd scraped raw in escaping the handcuffs, so she began instead with the right, clenching and wiggling until she stretched it far enough to get her fingers free. Then she flexed her arm inside the bonds, until that, too, could be pulled out and start finding ends to unwind herself.

Ripping the tape off the fresh scab on her left hand tore more skin away and it began to bleed at the edges, but in the cold wind the blood froze rather than flowing. Nat wiggled her left arm free, and got to work on her legs. She knew she was taking too long, but her bruised ribs were making it difficult to breathe, and with the wind in her face and no goggles on it was hard to keep her eyes open. She had to do everything by touch.

Kamila and Yelena had done a very good job of tying Nat up. She'd only been semi-conscious after the beating Yelena had given her, but she'd still been awake enough to tense up so that the bonds would not be tight once she relaxed. They, in turn, had known to twist and layer the duct tape to make it harder to tear. Already drained, Natasha was struggling with it. As she tried to pull an end away from her ankles, she opened her eyes a crack and realized she was out of time. The ocean was rushing towards her like a wall of blue.

With only fifty feet to go, she undid the buckles on the parachute and dropped away from it. At least with her feet still tied, it was easy to assume a streamlined position to enter the water – but even so, the impact stung.

The South Equatorial Current was a lot warmer than the frigid air at twelve thousand feet, but ti was still below body temperature, and hitting the surface forced the last of the air out of Nat's already stressed lungs. With her legs still tired, she could not swim effectively, but the life vest taped into position around her neck helped to compensate. She broke the surface in the middle of a mass of dead, slimy seaweed and sputtered salt water for a minute or two. When she finally stopped gasping for air, when her eyes finally stopped stinging enough that she could open them, she tried to size up her situation.

There wasn't much to size up. All she could see was open water to the horizon in every direction and empty sky above, without even a bird to break the endless blue. About a hundred feet behind her, Yelena and Kamila had also splashed down. Kamila had somehow become entangled in her own parachute and was trying to get free. That would slow her down, but Natasha knew Yelena wouldn't stop to help her. Nat turned away from them and started swimming as best she could.

Her chest burned with the effort, but she kept it up, even though she didn't have the slightest idea of where she was actually going. The odds of finding an island, a friendly ship, or even a dolphin were astronomically tiny, but she had to try. Natasha had never been the fastest of the widows, or the strongest, but she was the one who never gave up.

Then she heard the thunder of helicopter blades.

Nat didn't dare look up for fear of attracting attention – instead, she tried to think of a way to hide. Maybe she could duck under the seaweed that was still clinging to her, but first she'd have to get rid of the bright yellow life vest still fastened around her neck with tape. She began trying to pull it free.

But her strength was flagging. Natasha was in pain and she still couldn't breathe properly: before she could make much progress, a violent downdraft told her that the helicopter was directly overhead. Frogmen dropped into the water all around her, and Nat realized that for the first time in a very long time indeed, she'd been beaten. Bruised, exhausted, and still partially bound with tape, there was very little she could do as they wrapped her in a nylon net and hauled her up to the Kamov KA-27. No longer able to fight, she simply lay limp and let them shackle her all over again.

Yelena and Kamila were pulled up after her, and took their seats while Natasha remained half-conscious on the floor. Yelena kicked her in the abdomen on the way by, and the pain made Nat open her eyes for a moment, just as one of the frogmen closed the helicopter door. Before it shut, she just barely caught sight of the contrail of a passenger aircraft, vanishing over the western horizon.

* * *

It was June, and the taiga was beginning to thaw. It produced a very distinctive smell, of marshy water and damp earth, and nine months' worth of animal shit all defrosting at once. To human eyes the place still looked desolate, with only a few greening marshes scattered among patches of snowy conifers, but to the local wildlife the pale shoots and temperatures above freezing were a veritable paradise. The reindeer were heading north to pick at the first offerings of moss and spring flowers, joining the scattered groups of musk oxen who beginning to shed their thick winter coats. Bears were rousing themselves in their caves and dens, and foxes and raptors had come out to hunt the rabbits, whose white pelts were now easily visible against the background of brown and green.

In the middle of all this wilderness, which it seemed the 20th century could not possibly touch, there was a crashed spy plane and its American pilot. The man had not spoken to another human being in the two weeks since he'd been hit by anti-aircraft fire over Norilsk, but that didn't mean nobody knew he was there. Natalia and Yelena had been watching him for days.

What Yelena thought of the man was impossible to say, but Natalia was a bit puzzled by him. He should know he couldn't expect to be rescued – the United States had already officially denied that he'd ever existed. Maybe he thought he could wait until winter and walk to Canada across the sea ice, but that would be a long trip in the polar dark and bitter cold, running a gauntlet of thin ice, killer whales, polar bears, and starvation. A Soviet man in the same situation would surely have committed suicide rather than risk being found by his enemies, but the pilot was putting his survival training to use, snaring rabbits and gathering edible greens and fungi.

Maybe he didn't even have a goal. Maybe he just hoped to survive alone in the tundra for as long as he could.

"I'm going to rob his snares," Natalia decided.

"Don't do that." Yelena shook her head. "That'll only make him angry."

"No, it will make him sympathetic," said Natalia. "He'll think we're lost and hungry, too, and he'll want to help us." The girls had been trained to inspire and use sympathy, but never to feel it themselves. Sympathy was a good trait in peasants, who had to help each other raise food for the State, and for factory workers and such people – but black widows could not afford to feel it. They must love the State, as the State loved them, and nothing else.

There was certainly no sympathy in Valeria. "Or else he'll shoot you for stealing his food," she said.

The pilot did have a gun. They'd seen him cleaning and checking it. He could have used it to shoot the rabbits, but he strangled them with twin instead. Perhaps he was saving the bullets for a special occasion. Natalia supposed he was probably afraid of bears, or of Soviet soldiers.

If so, he was unlikely to waste precious ammunition on a pair of thirteen-year-old girls. Both Natalia and Yelena were dressed in reindeer-hide coats and leggings, with their hair in pigtails and a few small items of beadwork for decoration, as if they were children of the local nomads. They, too, had spent the last few days living on rabbits and roots as they watched the pilot.

"Let me try it my way," said Natalia. "If I fail, you can take over."

"If he shoots you, I'll leave you to die," Yelena told her coldly.

"I wouldn't expect you to carry me," Natalia said. If she died, Yelena would still have this mission to complete. Carrying Natalia home would compromise that, and was therefore not an acceptable use of resources.

Natalia climbed over the crest of the hill and slid down the icy patches on the far side, as sure on her feet as any of the nimble reindeer. At the bottom was a rabbit warren with a snare set over one of the holes. She crouched next to that, positioning herself carefully. Her hide clothing might easily blend into the overall gray and brown of the tundra. Natalia wanted to be seen, but not to look like she wanted to be seen. It was a delicate balance that depended entirely on the colourful beadwork and her very visible red hair.

After a moment, a rabbit appeared. Natalia didn't want to see if it entered the snare on its own. Her hand darted out to grab it by the ears.

The rabbit at once began to scream and kick in distress. It would have been easy to break its next, but Natalia deliberately fumbled, pretending the animal was slipping out of her mittens. It tried to run and she grabbed it again, so the screams continued. Not a lot of people knew that rabbits could make noises – nature was full of surprises.

Natalia knew perfectly well that the pilot was coming up behind her, but she pretended to concentrate on the rabbit, and finally seemed to get a firm hold on it just as she heard the click of the gun. Maybe Yelena had been right after all. When she turned around to face the man glaring down the barrel at her, Natalia made her blue eyes as wide as possible and backed away, as if in terror. The rabbit fell to the ground at her feet and fled for its life.

The pilot smelled of wood smoke, over the distinctive sharp odor of a human being who has not taken a bath in many days. He was African by ancestry, with his hair cut very short and a beard beginning to grow. For a moment he and Natalia simply looked at each other, but then he lowered his weapon.

"Hello, there," he said in English.

Natalia considered her options. "Bana zarar etmeyin," she said. It meant please don't hurt me, although she suspected she might just as well have said anything else and it wouldn't matter. If this man were trained as a spy he might recognize and understand Russian, but she doubted he could tell Turkish from the Yakut languages people spoke in this area.

The pilot gently set the gun at his feet, and offered her a hand. "Do you speak English?" he asked.

Natalia took a step back. "Anlamıyorum," she said – I don't understand.

The pilot licked his lips. "A ty govorish' po Russki?" he asked. His accent was extremely strong, and he recited the question as something he'd learned by rote, rather than a sentence he really knew the meaning of.

Natalia shook her head. Yelena was still watching from the ridge at the top of the hill, and Natalia decided she had now made friends with the man and she should now call her partner. She didn't like working with other, none of the girls did – a partner might be able to complete a mission she'd failed at, and get the reward while Natalia got the punishment, but having two of them also doubled their chances of success. Natalia deliberately turned her head to look at Yelena. The pilot followed her gaze, and beckoned for Yelena to join them.

"It's all right!" He held up his hands, showing that he had put the gun down. "I won't hurt you!"

"O sempatik!" said Natalia – he pities us. She'd been right.

Yelena slid down the hill to join them.

"Let's go check the other traps," said the pilot, motioning for the two girls to follow him. "I don't know if I can feed all three of us, but I'll give it a shot."

As the sun brushed the horizon that evening, they sat down in the shelter of one twisted airplane wing, which was stuck upright in the marshy ground, and built a campfire to eat their supper of rabbit and mushrooms. The girls devoured it hungrily, keeping up their pretense of being lost and starving. Although he could have taken the food away from them, the man allowed it.

He also talked to them.

He told them his name was Darius. He said he was married to a woman named Rebeca, and that they had two sons, the older one six and the younger just eighteen months. He described how, as a child, he'd loved reading books about survival in the wilderness, books like Robinson Crusoe and Island of the Blue Dolphins.

"Of course," he chuckled to himself, "they got to be stranded on beautiful tropical islands where they didn't have to worry about their toes freezing and dropping off. I couldn't get that lucky. It's beautiful country up here, don't get me wrong, but I'm gonna have to think of something before the autumn comes."

Natalia chewed quietly and wondered whether his wife and two little boys knew why he'd been away so long. Of course it didn't matter, really, whether they did or not – their knowledge was irrelevant to the mission Natalia had to accomplish. Yet now that she knew they existed she couldn't help but think of them, just as she couldn't help but wonder from time to time whether Baba Galina were still alive, and if she were, whether she ever thought of Natalia.

There was no sunset on the taiga in June. The temperature dropped below freezing and the sky turned purple and pink, but the sun sat low on the northern horizon without ever actually disappearing as it would at lower latitudes. Darius – the pilot, Natalia corrected herself – checked his watch repeatedly, and then announced it was time for bed.

"Maybe your people will come looking for you two," he said to the girls as he bedded down inside the broken fuselage of his plane. "Maybe they'll take me in. I doubt anybody even knows what goes on in the world up here... you look like your lives probably revolve around the reindeer." He settled his head down on a folded jacket. "I'd never seen a real reindeer up close until last week. I didn't know they were so small. No wonder it takes eight of them to pull Santa's sleigh."

Natalia and Yelena curled up and waited. They couldn't take action until they were certain the pilot was asleep. In the constant daylight he would probably awaken easily.

It was when Natalia heard him muttering to himself that she figured it was probably all right. She sat up and stretched a kink out of her neck. "I'll search him," she said. "You check the plane."

"You got to be the one to rob the snares," Yelena objected. "I'll search him. You check the plane!"

"Whatever you want," said Natalia. She wasn't interesting in arguing about it.

She had no light for her search except the deep, dim red of the midnight sun. Low on the horizon and magnified by the atmosphere, it looked like a star about to die, but it was enough. The fuselage of the crashed plane was on its side, with its belly towards the east. That was where the cameras would be mounted to take pictures of Soviet naval and air force bases. Natalia located and checked them, but found that the film had been removed. The pilot must have taken it out, in case anybody found the wreck. He knew they would be interested in finding out what he wanted to look at.

Natalia next checked the cockpit, climbing in through a broken window to rummage through paperwork, flight plans, and other items. She did not find the film, but she did find a bent photograph of a couple on their wedding day. The man was Darius, so the woman must have been his wife Rebeca. Natalia turned the photograph over. Written on the back in blue ink were the words volar a mí – fly back to me.

She climbed back out again. The pilot must have the film on his person somewhere, which meant that Yelena would be the one who found it. Natalia didn't like that, but it wasn't important who succeeded at this particular mission. They had to serve the State, to repay the love it alone had shown them. That was what Madame always said.

Natalia dropped soundlessly to the ground next to the fuselage. Yelena had already gone through the pilot's backpack, and was now unzipping his jacket.

"Beca?" he murmured. "That you?"

"Sssh, honey, you're having a bad dream," Yelena replied soothingly. She matched his Tennessee accent flawlessly. "Go back to sleep."

The pilot woke with a jerk. He rolled over and grabbed her wist, staring at her. Yelena had not seen the writing on the back of the photograph. She didn't know that Rebeca was Latin, and probably did not have the same accent. For a moment Darius stared at Yelena in disbelief, but then his jaw tightened.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

"Bırak! Canımı acıtıyorsun!" complained Valeria, in Turkish.

"You spoke English, I heard you!" the pilot said. He pulled his gun out of his belt and pressed it under her chin. "Who do you work for? What kind of barbarians use little girls as spies?"

He was paying no attention to Natalia, so she jumped onto his back. With her legs around his neck she used her entire body weight to throw the man against the side of his airplane, hard enough to break the already compromised structure. There was a sudden stink of jet fuel. Natalia rolled away, Darius' gun now in her hands, and aimed it at him.

He sat up, groaning and rubbing his neck, and couldn't seem to figure out what had happened until the fuel spill suddenly reached the embers of his campfire. Suddenly the wreck was ablaze and they were surrounded by light. A moment ago Darius had been threatening – now he looked terrified.

"Who are you?" he repeated.

"Where is the film?" Natalia asked calmly. They'd been found out now. She may as well just ask for it.

"What film?" He licked his lips, then reached inside his jacket and pulled out a metal canister. "You mean this film?" he asked, and in one motion he opened the canister and threw the contents into the fuel fire.

Without thinking, Natalia put a bullet through Darius' right hand. It passed through and kept going, into his thigh, but it was too late. Yelena ran to retrieve the film but had to back off. The fire was too hot to approach, and the film was already ruined.

"Der'mo!" Yelena exclaimed. "I could have gotten it!"

"It doesn't matter," Natalia told her. "It's gone now." The past two weeks had just been rendered wasted in a moment of poor decision-making. "Let's go back to base." She stuck the gun in her waistband – if she left it, the pilot might use it on them.

"Madame is going to beat us both," said Yelena as they turned to go.

"Wait!" Darius protested.

Yelena kept going, but Natalia paused and looked back. The pilot was lying on the ground, clutching at his bleeding leg, his eyes wide with pain and fear.

"Shoot me again," he said. "Please. I can't walk, and I don't want to burn. Let me go fast."

Natalia bit her lip. If she left him alive, he might survive long enough to be found by the specialists who would doubtless arrive to pick through the wreckage. They would save his life, and then send him to Kuchino to be questioned by torture. When they could get no more information out of him, he would be worked to death along with the other political prisoners in the camp.

"Please!" Darius begged. He was trying to crawl away from the fire, but his blood-soaked trouser leg was already starting to catch.

Natalia put a second bullet between his eyes, and he fell.

"What did you do that for?" Yelena demanded. "Now they can't question him!"

"He wouldn't have told them anything anyway," Natalia said, and dropped the gun on the ground before she finally turned her back and walked away.


	6. Chapter 6: Crime and Punishment

At the appointed place, Yelena fired off a flare to signal their superiors. Within the hour, a helicopter had arrived to pick them up, and they began the long flight south, out of the polar twilight and into darkness. On the way, Natalia noticed the lights of a second aircraft, heading north on their starboard side. That would be the team sent to pick up the American pilot. By the time they got there, she thought, his body would probably have been burned beyond all recognition. The wife and child he'd mentioned would not even be able to bury him.

Upon their arrival at headquarters, back in St. Petersburg, the two girls were ordered to clean themselves up and change clothes. They were given a quick meal, which was neither as tasty nor as nutritious as the rabbit and mushrooms they'd eaten on the tundra. Then, dressed in the black and white school uniforms that westerners found uncomfortably reminiscent of maid's costumes, they were brought to deliver their report to Madame.

Talking to Madame was always an unnerving experience. She had no scent, not even of soap or perfume, which always made her seem as if she weren't quite a real person, as if she were a ghost or a statue that was capable of moving around. It was next to impossible to tell what she was thinking. Her pale skin seemed to be stretched too tight, leaving her face with very little expression, and at times her icy blue eyes seemed to look right through the girls as she spoke to them. Today, however, she was most definitely looking _at_ them – and it was that, more than anything else, that told Natalia and Yelena that she was _furious_.

She waited until the guards had left and the door was locked. There were no windows in the little underground interrogation room, not even a two-way mirror, and the ceiling vent that provided fresh air was only six inches across. Besides the chairs the two girls were sitting in, there was no furniture. They were completely isolated, and Madame wanted to be sure they _knew_ that before she began the questioning.

"Why was he shot?" she asked. "You were told not to hurt him unless it was absolutely necessary."

"It was necessary," said Natalia. "I was trying to stop him throwing the film into the fire."

"She failed," Yelena added with a sneer. She knew very well that Madame already knew that. She simply wanted to emphasize it.

"And how did he know you were after the film?" Madame demanded.

"Because Natalia _asked_ him for it!" Yelena jumped to her feet and pointed angrily at her partner. "She took his gun away from him and _asked_ him where it was! And then after he burned it, she shot him _again_ for no reason, so now you can't even question him!"

"Silence!" snapped Madame. "Sit _down_."

Yelena scowled, but immediately lowered herself back into her seat, glaring at Natalia the whole time. Natalia refused to meet her gaze. Both of them knew that this was a contest – each wanted Madame's approval, and each wanted to make sure the other took as much of the blame as possible. Each was perfectly willing to throw the other to the sharks in order to accomplish that.

"Why did you ask him for the canister," Madame asked Natalia. "You were supposed to take it without him knowing. Then we could use it as leverage when we questioned him, by dangling what we already knew!"

"I tried," Natalia said. "But Yelena blew our cover, so I thought it was time to be more direct."

"You could have salvaged it," Yelena said. "You could have denied it and he would have thought it was all a bad dream, but you _didn't_. You had to show off!"

"Yelena!" Madame turned towards her. "I did _not_ give you permission to speak! How did you blow your cover?"

"He woke while I was searching him," Yelena said.

"He was talking in his sleep, and thought it was his wife touching him," Natalia said. "Yelena tried to talk to him in English..."

"It was a perfectly reasonable thing to try!" Yelena said.

"I'd been searching the cockpit," Natalia went on, without even looking at Yelena. She would not rise to the bait and shout in reply. That would only make Madame angry with _both_ of them and her goal now was to keep Madame's anger focused on Yelena. "There was a photograph of him and his wife there with a love note written on it in Spanish. His wife would have spoken to him in _that_ language."

Madame nodded once, sharply. "Why did you attempt an imposture without any information?" she asked, turning to Yelena.

"I had information," Yelena protested. "He'd been talking to us, without realizing we understood."

"What did you think you knew?" Madame asked, cold.

"I knew his wife's name was Rebeca," said Yelena. "That's an American name! I knew they had two sons and were living in Anchorage, Alaska, but were originally from Texas. I assumed..."

"Stop there." Madame held up a hand. "You _assumed_."

"It seemed like a reasonable assumption," Yelena said.

"You do not _assume_ ," Madame told her. "You work with the information you _have_. To assume you know how somebody will speak or what they would say in a situation is risky, and once you have spoken or acted you cannot take it back if it is out of character. What _should_ you have done?"

Natalia smiled a little. She'd won – Yelena was going to take the blame.

"At the moment it was all I could think of!" Yelena said.

"Because you did _not_ think!" snapped Madame.

Yelena shrank away. Madame rarely came even _close_ to shouting. She was normally content to terrify in the same calm, cold voice as the one she used to tell the girls she loved them. The rarity of her anger made it all the more frightening, because they did not know it the way they knew her other moods. When Madame was pleased she would do certain things, when she was annoyed she would do others... but when she was _angry_ , she might do _anything_.

"What _should_ you have done?" Madame repeated.

Yelena swallowed hard, her eyes flicking back and forth as her mind raced. "I should have... I should have stayed in character," she said. "I should have made him think I was cold, and curling up with him for warmth."

Madame nodded. "And _why_ didn't you do that?"

"Because... because I wanted to do something impressive." Yelena squirmed. "I wanted to complete the mission myself."

"Missions are not about being impressive," said Madame. "They are about getting the job _done_. Mistakes are not a luxury we can afford, do you understand that? This is the glory of the _state_ at stake here, and it is so much _more_ important now that we've had to go underground! Do you understand that, Yelena? Can you wrap your miserable, self-important little mind around it?"

"Yes, Madame," said Yelena.

The door opened and two men came in to take Yelena away. Madame would have already decided what her punishment would be, Natalia realized. Maybe she would have to run an obstacle course naked in the snow, the way she'd once prescribed for the twins who'd tried to escape. Natalia stood also, expecting that she, too, would be allowed to go – but the men escorting Yelena did not wait for her. Once they had her partner out of the room, they shut the door in her face.

"Sit down, Natalia," said Madame.

A fall of nausea settled into the bottom of Natalia's stomach as she realized the interrogation was not over. She returned to her seat and focused on the wall just behind Madame's right ear, so she would not have to look into the woman's eyes as they bored into her.

"Why did you shoot the pilot?" asked Madame.

"I was trying to stop him burning the film," said Natalia. "As Yelena has already told you, I failed." She couldn't be punished too badly for _that_ , could she? It hadn't been a fatal mistake the way Yelena's speaking English had been. What Natalia was far more afraid of being punished for was the _other_ shot she'd fired, and she knew Madame was going to ask about that, next.

"Why did you _kill_ him?" Madame wanted to know. "That was not necessary."

"He would have been dead anyway by the time anyone could reach him," Natalia said, lowering her head. "He couldn't get away from the fire. I thought it was kinder to shoot him than to let him burn to death." Why had she been concerned with that? _Why_ had she let herself listen to his aimless talking on any other level than that of gathering information? _Why_ did she care what his wife and sons would think of his end? They would probably never know what had happened to him, and she would certainly never meet them!

Because she didn't dare look up, Natalia didn't know what Madame's face looked like. Her voice, however, had returned to its normal blank emptiness as she asked, "and what unwarranted assumption did _you_ make?"

Natalia had to think about it a little. "I assumed he wouldn't break under torture," she said. He probably wouldn't have. A man who would burn the film with a gun pointed at his head was probably not one who would tell anybody anything he didn't want to. "And I assumed there was no way to save him." She tried to head off the next question, the one she knew was coming. "I should have helped him drag himself away from the fire." Why hadn't that occurred to her?

The door opened again, and the men returned, this time it was Natalia who was lifted out of her seat and escorted out – exactly as she should have expected, really. There was never any point in trying to lie to Madame. There was never even any point in trying to conceal the truth with misdirected honesty. Madame knew everything... and anyone who did wrong would eventually be punished for it.

* * *

It was two days before Natalia got to sleep in a bed again, a thing she'd been looking forward to since their first night on the tundra. As the girls got older, they'd been moved into smaller and smaller dormitories. As they entered their teens, they now slept in little rooms that each held four, in two sets of bunk beds. These smelled mostly of laundry detergent, but also of dusty concrete with an overlying layer of must that probably represented something they did not want growing in the ventilation. Girls from the same area did not share rooms, which made them less likely to talk among themselves after the lights went out. Natalia wondered sometimes whether this had always been the case, or if it had been instituted only after the incident when the twins from Chernobyl had tried to escape. She'd never asked.

The evening she returned to the dorms, Natalia found herself assigned to a room with only two others instead of three – one was Kamila Ibrayev, a girl originally from Kazakhstan, and the other Eglė Mielkutė, a Lithuanian. The Red Room discouraged the girls from getting to know each other personally, but on this particular evening Natalia could tell that her new room-mates were somewhat in awe of her. It was rarer now for girls to simply vanish and never return after a bad mistake, but it still happened... Kamila and Eglė must be astonished that Natalia had come back.

At nine o'clock, women came in to shackle each girl to her bed and turn out the lights – Natalia was locked in to the upper left bunk, above Kamila. Any of them could have easily escaped from a handcuff by now, but few of them bothered. In fact, many of them actually found something rather comforting about the chain. They knew they were where they were supposed to be if they were handcuffed to a bed, and Natalia realized as she shut her eyes that she identified with that idea more now than she ever had before. Sleeping rough on the taiga had made her feel as if the planet were turning underneath her and might throw her off into space at any moment. Here, with the concrete roof above her head and the cool metal of the handcuffs slowly warming to body temperature, she knew she was safe.

Black Widows, however, were never really safe. Natalia nodded off into dreams that most people would have considered nightmares – and woke with a pillow over her face, unable to breathe.

Somebody was sitting on her chest, so Natalia brought her right knee up, ramming it into the attacker's lower back. Whoever it was cried out in pain and the pressure of the pillow eased, so Natalia was able to throw the person off. The room was almost pitch-black, with only a crack of light seeping in around the door, just enough for Natalia to make out faint figures. It wasn't much, but it was enough for her to defend herself. There was no time to get her hand out of the cuff, so she gripped the bed frame with her left hand and swung herself down, prepared to use her other three limbs as best she could.

"Help!" Eglė was shouting. "Help, there's something going on in here!"

The person Natalia had thrown from the bed was lying on the floor, groaning. There was another, however, who ran at her to tackle her. Natalia grabbed the top bunk on the other side and brought her legs up to kick the attacker back against the wall, but the person grabbed her ankles and pushed them up, leaving Natalia twisting in the air. She got one leg free and kicked the other in the face, then dropped to her feet again as the attacker staggered back. In this moment of reprieve, perhaps she could get out of the handcuffs.

Then the lights came back on. For the first half-second they seemed absolutely blinding, and Natalia just had time to make out a prone figure on the ground and Yelena wiping a bloody nose on her sleeve. Before that information had even properly registered, security men rushed into the room and threw Natalia against the wall. They took the handcuffs off her, but then shackled her arms behind her back before pushing her out into the hall. Yelena came next, also in chains. Then Eglė and finally Kamila, walking bent over in pain. All four girls were herded down the hall by men who shouted and brandished guns, and shoved into Madame's office.

Madame was waiting for them there in a long white house robe. Even in the middle of the night, with her hair braided and no makeup on, she still had a green scarf around her neck. Natalia suddenly remembered an old fairy tale, and wondered if Madame's head would fall off if the scarf were to be removed.

"What happened here?" Madame demanded.

Yelena, clutching a fold of her nightgown to her bleeding nose, opened her mouth to speak. Before she could get a word out, however, Madame slapped her hard across the face.

"No," she said. "Nobody who _participated_ in the fight is allowed to say a word. You." She pointed at Eglė. "Tell me."

"I don't know," said Eglė timidly. "I woke up when I heard the door open, and somebody came in to wake Kamila. I tried to tell them to be quiet because we would all be in trouble, but Yelena said they had something to do. I heard Kamila climbing a ladder and I thought she was going back to bed above me, but I couldn't feel the bed moving. Then Natalia woke up and threw Kamila on the floor, and I could hear fighting, so I called for help."

Madame nodded. "So you were the instigator," she said to Yelena. "You couldn't make Natalia take the blame for your mistake, so now you tried to kill her."

Yelena sat up straight. She'd been ashamed of her mistakes on the mission, but apparently she wasn't at all ashamed of her attempt at murder.

"And you wanted _her_ to do the actual killing," Madame added, pointing at Kamila.

Kamila hung her head, and Yelena squirmed a little. Apparently _that_ did bother her, the idea that she'd tried to get somebody else to do the worst of the work. Had she hoped she would be able to pin the entire crime on Kamila?

"You two go back to bed," said Madame, nodding at Natalia and Eglė. " _You_ two," she looked coldly at Yelena and Kamila. "Come with me."

Yelena and Kamila were not at breakfast in the morning, nor at any meals for the following several days. Natalia began to wonder if either of them would ever be seen again but then Kamila returned, and Yelena the day after that. They looked tired and thin, but they were present and were able to join in exercises and lessons.

They did not try to speak to Natalia, and she did not speak to them. They weren't worth talking to.

* * *

Fifteen years after the helicopter had taken Yelena and Natalia to St. Petersburg, a very similar one landed, a bit roughly, on the deck of the _Tugarin Zmeyevich_. The ship was a Krechyet-class carrier of the late 1970's, the last of its kind still used by the Russian armed forces, and it was showing its age in rusted rivets and chipped paint. As the rotor wound down, Yelena and Kamila tossed Natasha out onto the deck, where she rolled over once and came to rest on her stomach, with the stink of the fuel-stained metal deck right in her nose. She probably could have gotten up if she'd wanted to, but she didn't want to.

She opened one eye and looked around. At first there were only vague colours and shapes, but then she made out a pair of white boots. Letting her eye move upwards she found a white coat, then a green scarf, and then at the top, the pale face of Madame.

Madame had no aged much in the past twenty years – there were rumors that she hadn't aged much in the past _eighty_. The only effect the decades seemed to have was to leech her of colour. Her already fair skin had paled to alabaster, her hair had lightened from Russian gold to Nordic cream, and her eyes had grown ever colder and icier. Certainly there was no hint of warmth in the pale gray-blue now, as she turned Natasha over with foot to study her.

Blinking up at the familiar face, Natasha's heart beat a little faster. The task before her now would be extremely difficult, maybe moreso than saving New York from an alien invasion, but she had to complete it. Failure would be worse than death, in several ways.

"Get up," Madame ordered. "Cuffs or no cuffs, I know you can. You're one of _my_ girls."

Natasha tried, but she stumbled and slid, her feet skidding out from under her as the deck tossed in the ocean waves. She got halfway up before she staggered forward and, unable to catch herself in her cuffs, slumped to the floor again. She would have fallen against Madame, but Madame stepped out of the way and let Natasha hit the armored steel deck face-first.

"Stop being such a drama queen," said Madame. "There's nothing wrong with you."

Her voice was one that had always been enough to make even badly injured girls get to their feet and try again. Forcing themselves to go on when they shouldn't was always better than being punished. Nat got to her knees, then bent over and retched. She hadn't eaten in hours, so all that came up was thin, sour bile.

"She's fine," snorted Yelena. "She's faking it."

"You beat her half to death with a bag of textbooks," Kamila reminded her. " _After_ you let her take you down with a taser _and_ Triinu tried to betray us."

"I won!" Yelena informed her proudly. "We brought her back. That was the _mission_!"

"Yes, and you were reckless and nearly ruined it," Madame said. "You've never _learned_. You always move too fast on too little information. The only reason I sent you on this mission, Yelena, is because I know you hate Natalia enough to bring her in or kill her. Well done," she added, but her grim voice held no hint of real congratulations. The implication was, rather, that she had no more use for Yelena at all.

Natasha couldn't see Yelena's face, and wondered what was on it. Pride? Affront? Or mere resignation? Surely even Yelena must have her limits.

Madame poked Natasha with her foot. "Get up," she said again. "Your play-acting doesn't fool me."

Natasha dragged herself to her feet inch by inch, as if it were the most difficult thing she'd ever had to do. She was shaking as she straightened her back almost – not quite – all the way, and her eyes stared into infinity instead of at Madame's face. She wobbled as the ship pitched, then stilled herself by sheer force of will.

Madame looked her over, and then backhanded her hard. Natasha saw the blow coming and went limp, falling and rolling several feet across the deck before coming to rest in a boneless heap.

"Garbage," snarled Madame. Nat heard her footsteps starting to walk away.

"What do we do with her?" asked a soldier.

"Put her in the brig, with no clothes and no bonds," said Madame. "Nothing she can use as a tool, no matter how unlikely." She sniffed. "And keep at least two men watching her at all times. I don't want less than four eyes on her, ever, between here and Vladivostok."

"Yes, Madame," said the man.

Natasha shut her eyes and let herself relax, as two men picked her up and carried her away.

* * *

The brig on the _Tugarin Zmeyevich_ had not been built to hold high-risk prisoners – it was a simple cage with a sliding door and a lock that would be easy to pick if Natasha had something to pick it with. They had, however, removed _all_ of the furniture. Even the cot attached to the wall had been taken away, so that she couldn't use any part of it as a tool or weapon. There were no chairs, no tables, the only thing left was the toilet.

Natasha was stripped. Even her underwear was taken, and then put her into a hospital gown – basically an oversized T-shirt – before they pushed her in and locked the door. She collapsed on the floor, not even caring that it was bare riveted metal, cold and solid as stone, and lay there quietly for a very long time before she raised her head for a look.

There were still three people in the hallway outside the cell – two guards in blue and white Russian naval uniforms, and Yelena, who was standing there with her hands behind her back, watching Natasha. She was still dressed in her stewardess' uniform.

"I knew you were really awake," she said, beginning to smile.

Natasha blinked at her, uncomprehending.

"You only ever called one number on that prepaid phone," said Yelena. "It belonged to a woman named Laura Barton. She's an artist and farmer from Ohio, married to an FAA retrieval specialist, and she was coming back from a vacation to Australia with her two children." Her eyes were focused on Natasha's face, watching carefully for any hint of a reaction. "She seems to be nobody... but then again, so does _Natalie Rushman_." Yelena rolled her eyes. "Come on, you couldn't come up with anything better than _that_?"

 _Natalie Rushman_ had been Fury's idea. He'd bet Nat a donut that Stark wouldn't be able to figure it out, and he'd won. Natasha murmured something to herself.

"What was that?" asked Yelena.

" _All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go_ ," Natasha sang softly. " _I'm standing here outside your door. I hate to wake you up to say goodbye..._ "

"Stop it!" Yelena shouted. "Even _Madame_ thinks you might actually be brain damaged, but I know better! What was on that plane, huh? Documents? Secrets? Diamonds? What does Laura Barton have that you want?" She rattled the bars.

" _But the dawn is breaking, it's early morning_ ," Natasha kept singing to herself, rolling over onto her back, " _the taxi's waiting, he's blowing his horn... already I'm so lonesome I could die_."

"I told you, that's enough!" said Yelena. She shook the bars, making them rattle. "I'm calling your bluff! Cards on the table! Whatever's on that plane, it will never get to SHIELD." She smiled meanly. "I set the hydraulics to blow before we jumped off. The plane can't be steered. They're going to crash into the Indian Ocean when they run out of fuel. It doesn't matter if Mrs. Barton knows what she's carrying or not, it's going to the bottom. You've _failed_ , Natalia. How do you like it?"

" _So kiss me and smile for me_ ," Natasha sang. " _Tell me that you'll wait for me... hold me like you'll never let me go._ " Her voice got louder. " _Because I'm leaving on a jet plane! Dunno when I'll be back again! Oh, babe, I hate to go!_ "

"You gotta stop that sometime!" Yelena snarled, and turned to the guards. "When she wakes up, call me. Not Madame – _me_. I want the first crack at her!" And she stomped out.

Natasha didn't move after her rival had stomped out, she merely lay there limp and stared at the ceiling, which needed painting. She hummed a few more bars of the song, and tried to ignore the cold of the metal floor biting into her skin.

The truth was, Laura Barton _did_ have things Natasha wanted. She had a lot of them. Laura Barton had a home. She had a _life_ , with a job and a family and children of her own, beautiful bright children for whom she was working to ensure the best future she could. She had hobbies, she had her pottery and her garden and her sewing. She had her dogs and her cows who loved her almost as much as her human family did.

And she had _Clint_. Clint Barton was the man who'd given Natasha the second chance she didn't deserve. He was the one who'd seen the good in her that even _she_ didn't know existed. How could she _not_ have fallen in love with the first person since Baba Galina who had believed that Natasha Romanov was _capable_ of love?

Laura Barton had everything Natasha had always dreamed of and always known she would never be able to have... but she could take them now. All she had to do was wait right here. If she lay here and sang to the walls like a woman with multiple concussions, flight AA113 would crash and everybody on it would die. Clint would be devastated, but he would know that Natasha had tried and failed to save them. The two were so close, it wouldn't be a stretch for him to turn to her for comfort. If she played her cards right, she could be Mrs. Barton herself by this time next year.

One of the things they'd taught her in the Red Room was that when the world arranged itself to complete a mission _for_ her, she should sit back and let it happen. There was no sense in fixing what wasn't broken. It would be so much easier just to stay right here. Nobody would ever know it had been anything but a tragic accident.

Nobody... except Natasha.


	7. Chapter 7: Flying Leap

With Yelena gone, there were two guards outside Natasha's cell, a man and a woman. The man was a sailor, a stranger to her, but the woman... was that Eglė Mielkutė? It had been so long since Natasha had seen her, she wasn't sure. Her hair had been dyed brown, and there were scars on the right side of her face that suggested an accident or disease had left her in need of extensive plastic surgery. Whatever the cause, the scarring meant she would no longer be useful to the Red Room – not with a face so easily identified. Had she _actually_ been shunted into the navy, or was she just here as a safeguard against Nat escaping?

Nat waited a little longer, humming to herself as she looked at the ceiling pipes and considered her options. The man pulled out a cellular phone and began to fiddle with it. After watching his fingers for a while, Nat decided he was playing some kind of matching game. A few more minutes passed, and then Eglė sat down on the bench across from the cell entrance and began checking her gun, clearly bored.

That was Natasha's cue.

Of course Yelena's beating had winded her. It had nearly knocked her out, and she had a splitting headache even now. But Madame and Yelena were both right – she wasn't nearly as badly hurt as she was pretending to be. She worried she'd overdone it with her staggering around on the deck, but having begun she hadn't dared to dial it down. By calling her bluff, they were baiting her. Natasha had already taken bait once today. She wouldn't do it again.

With that in mind, she began inching on her belly towards the toilet. It was the only thing in he cell besides Natasha herself and a couple of spiders in a corner. Hopefully she could do something with it.

"Hey!" The sailor got to his feet. "What are you doing?"

Nat pulled herself up onto the toilet seat and began taking off her hospital gown. With her hands and feet in shackles this was a difficult thing to do and required tearing a couple of the seams. She pushed the whole thing into a ball around her left arm.

"She's got something up her _pizda_ ," the woman sneered, and her voice confirmed Natasha's hunch – it was indeed Eglė.

"Stop where you are!" The sailor raised his taser between the bars and fired it.

Natasha's arms flashed up, and caught the electrodes harmlessly in the balled-up gown. Then she wrapped the wires around her wrists and pulled, yanking the weapon out of the man's hands before somersaulting forward. He was still too close to the bars, and it was easy to catch his arm between her bound feet and slam him hard against the metal. The first blow left him only stunned, so she did it twice more, and he crumpled to the ground.

She then looked up at Eglė. Eglė raised her own taser, but a moment later dropped it and pulled out her gun instead.

Nat turned herself right side up and pulled the soldier's half-conscious body up in front of her to use as a shield. It was awkward to do with her hands bound, but she managed it, and teased the keys out of his pocket with her toes. Then she shoved the body towards Eglė intending to undo her shackles while the other woman dealt with that.

Eglė fired twice anyway. One shot grazed Natasha just below the elbow, scratching the bone and bleeding profusely. The other missed entirely.

The sound of gunfire meant more people would be arriving at any moment, and Natasha was in no condition to fight several at once. She unlocked the cell door and swung around it like a pole dancer, kicking Eglė in the chin. The other woman stumbled sideways and fell against the wall. Nat landed on her feet and took the gun from her hands, then pinned her to the floor with the weapon against her temple.

"I saved your life once!" Eglė reminded her.

"No, you covered your ass," said Natasha calmly. "You didn't speak up until the fight had already started, and then only because you didn't want to get in trouble. If they'd smothered me, the next morning you would have insisted you'd slept right through the whole thing."

Eglė swallowed. She thought Natasha was about to kill her.

But instead, Nat scooped up the fallen taser and shot her with that. While Eglė writhed on the ground, Natasha got up and used the handcuffs to secure the door of the room. By the time they broke their way in, less than two minutes later, Nat had vanished. The sailor was groaning on the floor and Eglė Mielkutė was unconscious, dressed in the tattered remains of Natasha's hospital gown.

* * *

Natasha was familiar with the layout of the _Tugarin Zmeyevich_ – she'd been aboard one of its sister ships before as part of a training exercise. That knowledge was going to be essential, because her escape would not be as simple as diving overboard and swimming to land, or even getting in a plane ad taking off. There were several things that had to be taken care of first.

Before she could do anything else, she had to deal with her bleeding arm. That would be a challenge. Getting to the infirmary wouldn't be a problem. There were over sixteen hundred people on board the aircraft carrier and they couldn't possibly all know one another by sight. As long as Natasha looked like she knew where she was going and saluted anybody important, nobody would give her a second look. But in the infirmary she would have to interact face-to-face with people who would already have heard about her escape. She'd be caught within minutes.

So she skipped the infirmary entirely and instead slipped into the women's dormitory. This was close and cramped, with bunks barely far enough apart for two people to pass one another. Everybody kept their eyes down, because being ignored was as close as they could come to privacy. Nat chose an unoccupied bunk and pulled the first aid kit out from under it, then headed for the washrooms, eyes straight ahead. Once there, she locked herself into a stall.

All the fresh water on a ship this big had to be recycled, and different batches would be used for different purposes. The Soviet navy had once liked to boast that it could turn sewage into drinkable water, but Natasha still wasn't going to use toilet water to wash out her wound. Instead, she stuck to the peroxide from the first aid kit, which stung but did the job. Once she was sure it was clean, she used more peroxide to sterilize a needle, and began sewing herself up.

It would have been nice to have a local anesthetic, but a moment after that thought occurred, she snorted at it. There had been a time when Natasha Romanov wouldn't have been at all bothered by the idea of tearing out her own fingernails. Now a few pinpricks were making her squirm. Maybe SHIELD really was softening her.

As she worked, an alarm began to blare. _Attention! Attention!_ a voice announced in Russian. _All crew are advised that Natalia Romanova has escaped from the brig. Be on the lookout. Romanova is one point six metres tall and weighs approximately sixty kilograms._

"Fifty-seven," Nat muttered, continuing to sew up her arm.

 _She has dark red hair and blue eyes, and may be dressed as a petty officer first class. She is armed and extremely dangerous_.

Natasha tied off her thread, cut it with her teeth, and wound a bandage around her elbow. The announcement had told her what she now needed to do next: she had to hide her hair, and find some different clothing.

Since she was already in the washroom, a temporary solution to these problems was easily at hand. She discarded Eglė's uniform and grabbed two towels, one to wrap around her chest and one around her hair, as if she'd just come out of the shower. Then she walked casually back out into the dorm and chose an unattended foot locker. Hopefully it didn't belong to another petty officer first class.

It didn't – the locker contained a pilot's flight suit. It was a bit too big, but Nat did some tucking and rolling and tying of knots, and soon it looked fine. Black Widows were taught how to make clothes fit. She tucked her hair up under a knitted cap and put on a pair of aviator sunglasses, only for her stomach to lurch as she realized they had a prescription. For a moment she considered leaving them, then decided that hiding was more important than comfort. She didn't have far to go. She would cope.

One errand down, two to go. The second stop Nat had to make wasn't one she could avoid with improvisation and detours. She had to go to the main superstructure of the carrier – the _island_ was the technical term – and get a look at the planes. The _Tugarin Zmeyevich_ carried twenty Kamov K-27 helicoptrs and twelve Yak-38M fighters, all of them as outdated and rusty as their mother ship, but they'd have to do. The problem was that not all of them would have fuel or armaments on board. She would have to find out which ones did.

She found the main staircase and headed up to the deck. The sunglasses made the floor seem to bow up towards her, and she stumbled a bit on stairs that weren't where she expected them to be. When she stepped outside, she found it was a chilly, windy day in this part of the pacific, with low gray clouds overhead. The sunny weather around flight AA113 seemed like part of another world.

The prow of the _Tugarin Zmeyevich_ was occupied by weaponry and equipment that made the ship both carrier _and_ destroyer, and eliminating the need for an expensive escort like American aircraft carriers had. The flight deck was angled to port, and a few planes and helicopters were parked in the out-of-the-way spot in the lee of the island, leaving the runway clear. Nat's odds of being able to get a plane out of one of the hangars below decks all by herself were close to zero, so she would have to take one of the ones that was already out.

The island itself was several storeys tall, bristling with antennae and satellite dishes to watch the ocean and air around it. On the fourth level, facing the back where the planes took off and landed, was the row of windows that represented the equivalent of the control tower at a land-based airport. That was where Natasha had to go.

She jogged up a flight of stairs, ignoring the pain in her elbow and ribs as best she could. Like the infirmary, the control centre wasn't a place Nat could just walk into and take a look. The people who worked in there were a very small percentage of the ship's entire crew – they _would_ all know one another, and if a stranger came in they would want to know why. When she reached the right level, Nat turned _away_ from the door and instead went out onto the walkway for servicing the radar equipment. From there she climbed a ladder to the next level up, and stepped softly out onto the control centre roof.

This high above the deck, the pitching of the giant ship on the ocean waves was magnified. Combined with the distortion of the sunglasses it made Natasha feel downright ill, and she had to hang on to the ropes and railings as she worked her way to the edge. Part of her wished she'd forced herself to throw up as part of her show for Madame, just so she could have emptied her stomach.

At the edge of the roof she took off the sunglasses – their lenses would block her view of the polarized display screens inside – and chose a window that faced away from the sun. If it were to peek through the clouds, she didn't want to cast a shadow inside. She leaned over the edge, took a quick peek inside, and then straightened back up again.

That glimpse was all she'd needed. A man who must have been the chief flight controller had been having some kind of argument with Madame, who'd been pointing a finger angrily at the table in the centre of the room. People at the windows were going down checklists and talking on radios. Radar screens showed the positions of three other ships nearby – a _Slava_ -class cruiser and two _Sovremennyy_ -class destroyers, all heading in the same direction as the _Zmeyevich_. That was a pretty typical battle group. They were probably pretending they were just playing war games, but they would also have plenty of armament on hand if anybody came for their important prisoner.

Nat had also caught sight of what was _on_ the table Madame was concerned about: a scale diagram of the flight deck and hangars, with plastic poker chips representing each plane and helicopter. The chips were marked with different colours to represent which planes had fuel, which had missiles, and which were in need of maintenance. The four Nat had seen waiting on deck were all in good repair, but only three had fuel and only one was armed.

Airworthiness and fuel could not be dispensed with. Missiles, on the other had, would be _nice_ but weren't absolutely necessary, and the only plane that had them was right up by the island, boxed in so that she would have had to destroy one of the other Yaks to get it out. That stood a high chance of killing somebody who didn't need to die, so she decided to take the plane on the end. It would be the easiest to access and was already close to the beginning of the runway, giving her more time to get it fastened to the catapult.

Once in the air, she would have to immediately turn around and head astern to get away from the _Zmeyevich_ and its escort. After outrunning their missiles, she could figure out exactly where she was and how to go where she needed to be.

As she climbed back down the island to deck level, Natasha was doing math in her head. The ship wasn't planning to launch any planes right now – it was facing the wrong direction relative to the wind, so a launch would require more thrust. At the same time, choosing an un-armed plane would reduce the weight. Both factors would affect the catapult settings.

Nat was on her way down to the below decks when she heard Madame's voice behind her. Evidently the woman had finished arguing with the people in the control centre and was now on her way to her own next errand. Natasha stiffened her spine and kept walking the upright, personality-less walk of a soldier. If Madame saw her, it was all over. Nat had fooled Madame once today, she knew better than to think she could do it again.

All she had to do was get to the bottom of the steps. She had to reach the first deck below, and turn aft – that was where access to the catapult mechanisms was. She still had the peroxide she'd gotten from the first aid kit, and a watch she'd stolen from the foot locker. Now she just needed an acetylene torch, a fire extinguisher, and a few other bits and pieces.

She made it to the bottom, but the sound of Madame's footsteps was still behind her, falling in and out of time with Nat's own pounding heart. Had Madame noticed Natasha? Was she _following_ her? No, it couldn't be. Madame wouldn't _just_ follow Nat, she would say something, or grab her, or just shoot her. But surely she _would_ spot her at any moment. Madame had always told the girls that she knew them all by sight, by voice, by the way they smelled – and Natasha didn't dare to glance over her shoulder and check because she knew that if she met Madame's eyes, even in her nausea-inducing sunglasses, it was all over.

"Madame!"

Nat had been staring straight ahead as she walked – now her eyes focused. The voice was Eglė's. She was running up the hall towards Natasha, dressed now in a track suit of the sort of the sailors wore when working out on board. _She_ couldn't _help_ but see Natasha – and she did. The two looked right at each other, but then Eglė went right past to speak to Madame face-to-face.

"Madame," she said. "Petty Officer Yerokhin... Kamila's going to kill him! She thinks it was his fault Natalia escaped."

"Then let her kill him!" Madame spat. "I don't have time for this!"

Natasha kept walking. Eglė had _seen_ her, but she'd deliberately passed her by to stop Madame from noticing her too. Why had she done it? Perhaps because Natasha had gotten an opportunity to kill her and had not – but Eglė had done more than merely refuse to turn Natasha in. She'd actively made it possible for her to escape. Had she just wanted to be able to say she'd saved Natasha's life and mean it? Nat hoped she'd get a chance to ask someday, but right now she could not.

She stopped in a maintenance storage area for some more materials, and then made her way aft. The catapult that flung the planes into the air from the deck of the carrier was controlled by sailors sitting in a room in the island, but the actual machinery was just below the ship's armored deck. Only the maintenance staff were supposed to be able to open the door, but Nat picked the lock easily, then closed it behind her and laid out her materials on the ground.

It took about twenty minutes to build and set the charge on a small bomb. Now Nat had another twenty to get up to the flight deck and into the plane, and get the plane onto the catapult. She synchronized the watch she was wearing with the one on her bomb – a kitchen timer shed found in the maintenance closet. By anybody's standards, twenty minutes was a ridiculously short time to do such a thing. Natasha could do it.

 _Attention_ , said the announcing voice. _All crew are advised that Natalia Romanova is still at large. She is now believed to be dressed in a flight suit, knitted cap, and sunglasses_.

"Shit,"Nat whispered. Eglė must have told on her after all, or else Madame had beaten it out of her. Or maybe she'd been spotted elsewhere. It didn't matter. What mattered was that she needed to rethink her disguise and get up on deck without using a normal traffic route.

The hat and sunglasses had to go. Nat left them in the maintenance room. A piece of cloth had been tied around a pipe at one point to mark something or other – she pulled that off and wound it around her hair like a kerchief. It didn't cover the red completely, but it would help. Then she smeared grease from some of the joints on her face and hands, and tore the name patch off her flight suit. Now she would hopefully look like a mechanic, which would also give her an excuse to be near the stowed planes.

Her head was still pounding. She told herself she was almost there.

At the end of the hallway on the starboard side was a hatch that led out onto a gun platform at the stern of the ship, just behind and below where the planes were sitting. If she'd done a bit more planning ahead, she thought, she could have sabotaged the guns so they'd have more trouble shooting her down, but there was no time for that now. Nat climbed over the railing up to the second tier, then the third, and then onto the deck itself. The plane she'd chosen was right in front of her. Two technicians were loading missiles into the tubes.

That meant she could take off with some weapons, but she'd have to get rid of these two men first.

They hadn't seen her yet, and the plane itself would hide whatever happened from most people further forward. Nat considered her options, then pulled the rag off her hair, grabbed the nearest man from behind, and stuffed the cloth into his mouth so he couldn't cry out. Then she hooked her feet into the railing that surrounded the deck and swung him down, tossing him into one of the lifeboats stowed there. She then clung to the railing, ignoring her aching ribs and waiting.

"Hey, Dvornikov," said the other mechanic, "can you pass me the quarter-inch socket?"

Naturally, there was no reply.

"Dvornikov?" The second mechanic looked up, but all he saw was the toolbox, sitting alone on the deck. Startled, he ran to the edge and squinted down into the water, as Natasha pressed herself against the side of the ship to stay out of his line of sight. "Dvornikov!" he shouted, then turned to run back towards the superstructure. "Help! Help! Man overboard!"

As soon as he was twenty feet away, Nat slithered up onto the deck and scooped up the socket wrench he'd dropped. It looked like about the right diameter for what she'd need, and would save her the trouble of searching for the correct part. Then she grabbed the wing of the plane to climb into the cockpit. She could feel a stitch pop in her elbow and blood trickle down her arm, but she settled herself into the pilot's seat.

Now for the hard part. She had to get the plane into just the right place, and she would not get a second chance – the moment the engines started she would have enemies all over her.

As she messed with the plane's wiring to start the engines, she felt a change in the vibration within the aircraft carrier itself. Somebody must have listened to the second mechanic's cries for help, and they were changing course so they could stop and look for the missing Dvornikov. Somebody was probably going to be _really_ angry when they discovered him safe in the hanging lifeboat.

That might be an opportunity. Nat waited a few more seconds, and sure enough, she heard a helicopter engine start somewhere on the far side of the island – they were launching one of the Kamovs to search for the fallen crewman. That was exactly the distraction Natasha needed, and now she had less than five minutes left. She fired up the engines, and the Yak's old wings creaked as they moved from their upright storage position into the horizontal flight configuration. There was room on the left, where the deck ended, but on the right it hit the plane next to it, knocking it nose-first onto the deck.

"Oops," Natasha said to herself.

That would have drawn attention with or without the helicopter launch. Nat had to move immediately. She taxied forward, getting the plane into position above the catapult – a tiny leak of steam hissing out of the track in the deck showed her just where she needed to be. But the alarm had been sounded now, and soldiers were running to surround her. Somehow she would have to get out and attach the plane to the shuttle, but how?

She only had one missile and she wasn't going to fire it now. Was there ammo in the plane's guns? There was only one way to find out. Nat activated the gun pod, took careful aim _between_ the soldiers, and fired at the base of the superstructure. Bullets peppered the steel, their armor-piercing points going through it like butter. Had anybody been in there? Were they now hurt, or dying? Natasha hadn't had a choice, she told herself... she had to get out of here.

It worked. The soldiers ducked and ran for cover. Natasha grabbed a piece of twin and a bible that were sitting around in the cockpit and rigged those to keep the firing button down while she swung out to attach the plane to the catapult. Only a minute left.

To her relief, Nat found she'd managed to hit almost exactly the spot she needed. She slid the shuttle back a bit and went to push the socket wrench through the holes, but before she could get it in, somebody jumped on her from behind.

Natasha automatically rolled onto her back to crush her attacker, but whoever it was held fast, trying to pry the wrench from her hands. Nat tried to flip backwards, but the person wouldn't let her move. The arms holding onto her were in a white blazer, and she could see an orange and blue scarf flapping in the wind. This was one of the widows who'd been on the airplane. The hands were too pale to be Kamila, so it had to be Yelena. When Nat turned her head a bit, still fighting to keep her crip on the tool, she saw Kamila running to join them.

Her watch was counting down. There was no more time. In a moment the plane would take off without her.

She pulled as hard as she could on the wrench, forcing Yelena to pull back in order to hang on to it. Then Nat let go, and Yelena's arm snapped back. Natasha rolled off her, grabbed her short brown hair, and forced her head into the steam hissing out of the gap in the deck.

Yelena screamed and clutched at her face as it was scalded. Nat snatched up her wrench again and stood, just in time to face Kamila. She hit her across the face with a backhand stroke, sending her staggering away to the right, where she fell and rolled off the deck into the ocean. With her last few seconds, Nat forced the wrench into the shuttle, grabbed the edge of the wing, and swung herself back into the cockpit in a smooth gymnastic motion that popped several more stitches in her elbow. The sleeve of her flight suit was stained dark red. Nat reached to close the cockpit bubble.

It was too late. The ship shuddered underneath her as the bomb she'd left on the catapult mechanism exploded, and Natasha was pushed back into her seat as escaping steam hurled the plane into the air. The wind drew tears from her eyes, but she managed to grab the control stick and bring the nose up as she went off the ski-jump shaped end of the runway into the air. While gaining as much altitude as she could, she turned around to head aft. Her plane was to make a wide circle around the carrier and its escort.

But she'd forgotten the Kamov that was already in the air. It was gaining altitude to follow her, and might well have missiles on board. Nat had to speed up, but she couldn't do that until she had the canopy closed. In order to close it, she had to put the jet on autopilot and stand in her seat to pull the acrylic bubble down against the howling, two hundred mile per hour wind.

The first time she tried, she missed. The second time she managed to grab it, but when she tried to pull it shut the wind ripped it out of her hand again. On the third try, she put all her weight on it and braced her knees against the underside of the dashboard controls. It took every muscle in her body, but she dragged it shut and locked it.

Not a moment too soon. Nat pushed the stick forward to gain speed at the same time as a warning blared in her ears. The helicopter had fired a missile.

Natasha veered sharply left and dove, almost skimming the surface of the water. The missile tried to follow the heat of her engines, impacted the water, and exploded. She turned and headed back up again to get a look a the damage she'd done.

The aft deck of the _Tugarin Zmeyevich_ was billowing steam and the plane that had fallen when the wing hit it was now on fire. Figures were spraying it with firefighting foam. The forecastle was crawling with activity as sailors and soldiers prepped the ship's armament to fire. Natasha would have to outrun them.

She checked her controls. GPS data was coming in: she was not far from the island of Tonga. The carrier, which must have been ordered out to these waters specifically as part of the plan to capture her, had been heading Northwest. To get to Vladivostok would have taken it about four days. Nat's stolen plane was heading southeast, and if she kept that heading she would reach Chile in a few hours.

But Natasha wasn't going to Chile. Natasha had to catch up would Aurora Air flight 113. If she'd wanted, she _could_ have just left Laura and the children to die. Clint would never know – but Natasha would, and it wasn't a knowledge she could have lived with.

She turned south, and pulled a map out of the plane's glove box to chart the course she'd need. If she passed over New Caledonia, she could use the island's long axis to orient herself in the direction the 747 had been going last time she'd seen it. The jet had a two or three hour head start on her, but her Yak was twice as fast. Hopefully she could catch up somewhere over Indonesia or the Philippines, but she would have to _find_ the damned plane.

She grabbed the radio. "This is Natalie Rushman calling Pacific Control in Guadalcanal," she said. "Natalie Rushman calling Pacific Control in Guadalcanal, can you hear me? Espinoza?

"Rushman?" his voice came through immediately. "Is that you? Where _are_ you? We expected you over an hour ago. What are you doing?"

"It's a long story," said Nat. A cliché, but a useful one. "I'm now in an old Soviet Yak-38 trying to catch up."

" _What_?"

"I'll explain later," she said. "Right now I have to find AA113. Where is the plane? Can you give me its probable current position and heading so I can plot an intercept?"

"Uh, I can try," said Espinoza. Natasha heard the sound of shuffling papers. "Gimme a minute." He must have taken his headset off then, because there were only distant, muffled sounds as he spoke to somebody else in the room. A few seconds passed.

Then a warning light came on. The _Tugarin Zmeyevich_ had launched a missile, an M11 Storm with a much longer range – and much greater power – than the rockets fired from the Kamov. Its internal radar had her in its sights.

"Just a sec!" Natasha shouted into the radio, in case Espinoza came back at that moment. She tried the same maneuver that had thwarted the shot from the Kamov, performing an aileron roll and almost crashing into the water, but the Storm was maneuverable and designed to catch aircraft that were trying to evade it. She tried to think fast – there was no ammo left in her guns, but she did still have her own rocket on board. She hoped the technicians had finished the process of arming it. She turned around and got the Storm in her sights.

As soon as the computer showed it locked, she fired.

The two missiles collided in midair with an enormous fireball, close enough to shake the Yak so that Nat had to fight to control it – but then the smoke cleared, and it was over. She quickly resumed her heading away from the carrier. If they fired another shot, she was now out of ammo.

"Hello? Rushman?" asked Espinoza.

"Hi!" said Natasha.

"What are you _doing_?" he repeated. "Look, your American friend's guys here say I should do as you ask, but what the hell is going on?"

"I'll explain when I'm not running for my life from forty-year-old missiles!" said Natasha. "Where is AA113?"

Espinoza rustled some more paper. "We had a radar target that we _thought_ was the plane. It passed North of us over an hour ago. I can give you _its_ position and heading, but we've already lost it."

"That'll do," said Natasha. Yelena had said she'd set the autopilot to fly out over the Indian ocean, where the plane would crash when it ran out of fuel – Natasha checked her watch and realized it had been in the air nearly ten hours. From starting with fuel for probably around fourteen, the margins were getting a little thin. If they were too far from land when she caught up, she would have to ditch the plane in the water. "Lay it on me."

"Look, even if you catch up," Espinoza said, "you can't board a plane in midair."

Natasha laughed out loud – if he'd only known. "Don't tell me what I can and can't do," she said. "Just give me the coordinates."


	8. Chapter 8: The Orphanage Fire

Natalia had been in Poland when she received the sudden order to return to Headquarters in St. Petersburg. There was no explanation of _why_ , just a notice that her mission had been cancelled and her presence was required immediately. She read the message, and then rolled her eyes as she burned it – this had been going on ever since the Soviet Union had fallen apart in 1991. The government kept trying to revamp or repurpose the black widows, using them for everything from conducting tours of old facilities for western reporters, to recovering cultural artifacts sold by the communist government, to breaking up gay pride demonstrations. If Natalia went back to St. Petersburg now, she'd be given a new mission and might not get to complete that one, either, before the whole cycle started again – just like last time.

She wasn't sure why this time she responded differently. Maybe she was just fed up. Natalia Romanova was eighteen years old and confident that she had already outstripped all the authority figures around her... and so she simply walked away. She stuck out her thumb and hitchhiked to Prague, telling the driver that she was an American student on holiday, and she never looked back.

Except for once.

* * *

It was just after the Rajaputra job, when Natasha – as she was now calling herself – found herself with a little bit of time and money for leisure. This was a rare thing and one she still found a little difficult to cope with. Black widows didn't get free time. Every hour of their waking lives, they were supposed to be doing something useful, something that served a purpose higher than themselves, and even on her own she had a hard time escaping that kind of thinking. She still had nine days before she was supposed to meet the guy in Budapest, and the payment from the diamond brokers was enough that she could go pretty much anywhere in the world... so where did she _want_ to go?

Nobody had ever asked Natasha what she _wanted_ to do. It was always what did she _have_ to do, or what was she _planning_ to do... but never what she _wanted_. It was only in the past three or four years, since the day she'd ignored the summons to St. Petersburg, that she'd even begun asking _herself_ that. Now that she did, though, there was an idea that had been in her mind ever since she was very young.

As a very small child, Natasha had believed that if she did well at the tasks set for her, eventually she'd be allowed to return to the orphanage in Volgograd. That was where Baba Galina lived – it was kind of amazing that after all these nears, Natasha still remembered the woman's name – and Baba Galina had wanted to adopt her.

Of course, that had been a silly thought. The Red Room would never have allowed it, but even if they had, for all Natasha knew Baba Galina had made that same promise to _every_ little girl somebody left on her doorstep. Yet of all the places on Earth, the orphanage was the only one where Natasha could ever remember _wanting_ to be. So she covered her distinctive hair with a blonde wig, put some padding under her coat and some age makeup on her face, and got on a plane in Karachi.

It had been an unusually cold winter when Natasha had lived at the orphanage, and she always remembered the place as snowy. When she arrived, however, it was spring – the Volga was free of ice, and there were flowers blooming in the Square of Fallen Fighters. The wind was warm and smelled of clean water and fresh-cut grass, and people were walking around in sweatshirts and jeans, just like they might in the west. It was all wrong, as if Natasha had come to the wrong place.

And then there it was in front of her – the Volgograd State Home for Girls. It was a shabby old brick building of several stories, with a long peaked roof and the remains of a smokestack in back. Before being converted to an orphanage, it had been a flour mill. A number of little girls were running and playing outside while adults watched them. It was a strange thing to see, so... so _directionless_. When Natasha was told to run as a child, she'd been given a goal to reach, or a time to beat, or a package to deliver. These girls appeared to be just running for the joy of running. What was that like? Natasha could barely even imagine it.

She swallowed hard, not wanting to cry. Black widows did not cry unless they had something to gain by it. They were, as Madame said, made of marble.

The outside of the building looked familiar, but when she entered Natsaha found that the interior had been modernized. It smelled of fresh paint and linoleum glue, as if the renovations had only just been completed, and the scents told Natasha absolutely _nothing_. She'd expected, based on its outward appearance, to walk into this place and be overwhelmed by the familiarity of it – but instead it was entirely _generic_ , a room that could have been anywhere or nowhere. Natasha had steeled herself for a wave of emotion, but instead, she felt nothing at all.

There was a young woman sitting at the reception desk working at a computer. She looked up and smiled when Natasha walked in.

"Good morning!" she said. "Can I help you, Ma'am?"

"I hope so," Natasha replied with a carefully calculated shy smile. "I'm looking for a woman named Galina Kiryanova. She worked here a very long time ago... twenty years." In fact, it had been just about _exactly_ twenty years. Natasha had been taken from the orphanage when she was almost three.

"I haven't heard of her," the receptionist said. "Let me ask." She picked up a phone to page somebody in charge.

While she made her inquiries, Natasha wandered around the foyer, which was decorated with photographs of various places around the city. Most of these had a line of children in the foreground, smiling politely at the photographer recording their field trip to Mamayev hill, or the Planetarium, or Friendship Park. The girls in the pictures had been taken all over the city to learn about its heritage. They looked well-taken-care-of, dressed in nicely-fitting uniforms with their hair in tidy braids. Natasha scrutinized the faces in each picture, looking for any she recognized. She was looking for herself, for any evidence she could find of a life before the Red Room.

She found none. The faces in the photographs were all strangers.

"Ma'am?" asked the receptionist. "Mr. Tarnovetsky is coming down to see you."

When Natasha had lived here there would never have been a man in charge, but it was a man, with thinning hair and a patchy mustache, who came in to greet her. "Vitaly Tarnovetsky," he introduced himself. "I'm the headmaster."

Natasha shook his hand. "Natalia Romanova," she said. She wasn't sure why she gave her real name... maybe she hoped somebody here would recognize it. It wasn't likely – she'd been here only a couple of months, and her name would be only a footnote, if that, in the orphanage's voluminous history. "Do you remember Ms. Kiryanova?"

"No, I'm afraid that was before my time," said Tarnovetsky. "I do know who she was, though. There are actually still some of her things in storage here. Nobody ever came to claim them. Are you family?" he asked. It wasn't personal interest. He was merely hoping Natasha would take the stuff away so he would no longer have to deal with it.

Natasha shook her head, although she wondered... if Baba Galina had no family, nobody to claim her things, did that mean she'd never adopted a girl? Was that proof that Natasha had been special to her? Or proof that she'd made the same promise to all and kept it for none. "May I look at it anyway?" she asked.

"Of course," said Tarnovetsky. "Follow me, please."

He led her up to the attic, under the steep roof. Unlike the newly repainted lobby, this place had a smell – it smelled of dust, mildew, and old paper. That was a scent that went with places where people put things they didn't want or didn't need, things they'd rather forget about. A few low shafts of sunlight were coming in through small widows and fell on hundreds of cardboard boxes and crates, all stacked up in rows like a bargain-basement version of the warehouse at the end of _Raiders of the Lost Ark_. Natasha's immediate thought was that it would take _weeks_ to find anything in here.

Tarnovetsky, however, seemed to know where he was going. He took her to a back corner, where there was an old metal trunk with several boxes stacked on top, most of them partially water-damaged. Draped over one box was a shawl knitted from very fine yarn that had once been white, but was now yellowed and frayed.

Natasha remembered that shawl. Baba Galina had always worn it. Her grandmother had knitted it, she'd said – and someday she would teach Natasha to know, when she was older and her fingers could handle the needles. Natasha glanced down at her hands. They'd worked with guns and knives, and with the controls of tanks and airplanes. Her fingers flew over computer keys and picked locks and choked men to death. She'd held syringes and pliers, she'd built bombs from scratch and defused those built by others... but she had never learned to knit.

"You can take anything you like," Tarnovetsky said. "Honesly, it's only worry that somebody would come looking one day that makes us keep it."

She reached out and gently pulled the shawl off the box. It had been there a very long time, and moving it raised a shower of dust that swirled in the sunbeams like a tiny golden snowstorm, but the yarn was still soft with a gentle halo of threads around it. Natasha could see places where Baba Galina had darned holes and repaired snags – and a brown mark that her trained eyes recognized as a bloodstain somebody had tried to wash out. Had that been the day Natasha was taken?

"Ma'am?" asked Tarnovetsky. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," Natasha raised her head and smiled at him. "Of course I am. Thank you, I won't take any more of your time."

Then she heard a sound outside. The nearest window was high up on the wall in the peak of the roof – Natasha hopped up on the trunk to look out, holding her breath. The window was missing one of its four panes, and through the opening she could smell the fresh outside air... as well as gasoline and gunpowder. Vans had pulled up around the building and men and women in blue fatigues, helmets, and bullet-proof vests were climbing out. They had guns and shields, and their vests had the letters СОБР across the back – it stood for _Special Quick-Reaction Unit_. The Russian equivalent of an American SWAT team.

They'd found her.

Out of the corner of her eye, Natasha saw something move. She did a backflip off the trunk, grabbed a man by the throat with her free hand and threw him to the ground before she even bothered to look at his face and realize it was only Tarnovetsky. He stared up at her in dumbfounded shock as she held him to the floor.

"Did you call them?" she asked. He _could_ have made a phone call between the receptionist's summons and him coming downstairs, although it would only have been a brief one. Or he could have had the receptionist herself do it.

"No!" he clawed at her hand. "I swear! I don't even know who you are!"

Natasha decided he was telling the truth, and let him up. "Is there another way out of this building?" she asked. "A basement? Someplace they don't know about?"

"No," he repeated, leaning on a box as he gasped for air. "I don't even know who you are," he repeated, as if he thought that would save him from her.

"Attention!" a voice boomed outside, magnified by a bullhorn. "Natalia Romanova, you are surrounded. Come out with your hands in the air and allow yourself to be taken into custody."

Natasha glanced at Tarnovetsky, cowering terrified by the wall, and then decided to ignore him. She quietly took off her coat and the padding she'd been wearing underneath it, tossed her wig aside and pulled out an alcohol wipe to remove her makeup. Then she began opening boxes, pushing aside the ones full of records or old toys until she found one that contained clothing. Was it Baba Galina's? It probably didn't matter. She pulled out a white blouse with small blue flowers embroidered on it and put that on, then stepped into a mid-calf skirt before turning to look at Tarnovetsky again. He said nothing. It was patently clear that he had no idea what was happening.

"Take me to the kitchen," she ordered.

The largest room downstairs was the dining hall, where the orphaned girls sat at long tables to eat. The walls were painted with scenes from fairy tales, a far cry from the blank whitewashed cinder blocks Natasha remembered. The girls themselves were crying and huddled under tables in their caretakers' arms... and _that_ gave Natasha a momentary flash of memory.

 _Curled in a cupboard while men opened drawers and pulled things out, searching for her... sobbing quietly as she drew ever closer, realizing there was nothing she could do to escape them..._

She shook her head, unwilling to give in to the emotion. Was that the last time Natasha had ever honestly cried? It might have been. She'd never cried in the Red Room. She hadn't wanted to let them think they could break her.

In the kitchen Natasha found sugar and baking soda. In the fireplace in the common room there was wood ash. Natasha made a casing out of a glass jar and some tin foil, and then added the little bottle of pepper spray she carried as part of her personal arsenal. She couldn't open a door to lob the result at the SWAT team – she didn't doubt they had orders to shoot on sight. Instead, she took it back upstairs. She put on a pair of swim goggles and wrapped Baba Galina's shawl around the rest of her face, then pulled the rest of the attic window out of its pane and threw the bomb outside.

The jar smashed on the ground and the can of mace exploded, producing a quickly expanding cloud of stinging smoke. That would burn any exposed skin and make it difficult for the police to see or breathe. As people cried out in surprise and pain, Natasha climbed out the window and onto the roof, and from there leaped to the old smokestack. Missing and broken bricks provided plenty of hand and foot holds as she climbed to the ground, as nimble as a monkey.

Upon reaching the bottom, she dashed straight for the nearest SWAT officer and knocked him to the ground. He had an AK-47 – Natasha wrestled it out of his hands and kicked him in the face, then stood up. Other officers were starting to get their bearings, and a few had put gas masks on. They raised their own weapons and shields, but Natasha wasn't planning to aim for them. Instead, she fired at their vehicles, rupturing the fuel tanks. Gasoline spilled to the ground.

Another item Natasha always carried was a cigarette lighter. She flicked it open and threw it into the spilled gas. With a rushing roar and a breeze that blew her hair back, it burst into the flames. Blue fire raced across the surfaces of the spreading pools like a living thing, and the first of the SWAT vans exploded in a fireball that strewed burning wreckage up and down the black.

The hedges outside the orphanage caught fire first, then the wooden steps.

The scene quickly disintegrated into utter chaos. As people blundered around coughing in the smoke and calling for help, Natasha slipped through the ring of fire and vanished into the city.

* * *

Twenty-four hours later, she was sitting calmly in a cafe in Budapest reading a newspaper, with Baba Galina's old shawl draped around her shoulders. In a back section of the paper there was a note that the Volgograd State Home for Girls had burned down the previous day in a terrorist attack. Nine staff and twenty-six children had died, including Headmaster Vasily Tarnovetsky, along with four SWAT officers, two firefighters, and eight other people as the blaze spread to surrounding buildings.

For a moment, Natasha thought again of the little girl hiding in the bottom of the pantry, knowing that terrible things were about to happen to her and powerless to do anything about it. Twenty-six girls had stayed crouched under the tables in the dining hall with their guardians, as smoke filled their lungs and their world went up in flames around them. How had they felt in those last moments? Were any of them as young as Natasha had been? Did they have any concept of death? Or had the end been nothing to them but the moment when the pain and fear finally stopped?

She swallowed her tears and turned the page. The important thing was that _she_ had escaped. Lacking any other directive, that had been her mission. Besides, Natasha Romanov hadn't cried in twenty years and she wasn't going to start now. Black widows were made of marble.

* * *

It wasn't often that Natasha wished Tony Stark were around, but she could have used his formidable mathematical brain – and his friendly supercomputer – as she tried to figure out where to find AA113. Using the last known coordinates and speed as provided by Espinoza, and the weather report, she could guess where it had probably ended up... but the area she had to search was still hundreds of square miles and if they were still at ten thousand feet, there would be no contrail for her to follow. Instead, she had to rely on the Yak's targeting radar to look for other aircraft.

She spotted a few, but most were headed in the wrong direction, going _away_ from the Indian Ocean instead of towards it. Even so, she checked in with each, making contact and getting flight numbers and headings. Nat identified herself differently every time, just to see if any of them would compare notes and realize she was lying. None of them did.

Then, finally, there was one who didn't answer.

"Unknown aircraft, this is Natalie Rushman in Yak-38 over the Philippines," she said. She wasn't sure why she gave that name this time... maybe it was a hunch. "Please identify yourself."

Again, there was no reply, only static.

"Am I speaking to AA113?" asked Natasha. "Can anybody hear me?"

Nothing.

She got closer. It _was_ a 747-400, painted in Air Aurora's colours – and there was the registration AU-YBBW. Somebody had closed the emergency door the windows had bailed out through, but Natasha's harpoon, with the line trailing from it, was still embedded in the aircraft's skin near the rear cargo door. Nat had done this once, she could do it again... even if there were no safety equipment this time.

As she approached, Nat could see that there was nobody in the 747's cockpit. Other windows, however, showed people looking out – the lower altitude had allowed the passengers to regain consciousness. What did it feel like to wake up on a plane with no pilots? Nat waved to them, trying to let them know that help was on the way. A few people, both adults and children, waved nervously back.

In order to get on board, she was going to have to get close – closer than Chiba had come in the quinjet, and closer than the computerized warnings on either plane would be happy with. This might well be the most dangerous thing Natasha had ever done... moreso even than commandeering a Chi'Tauri vehicle. That at least hadn't had as far to fall.

When this was over, she thought, she was going to hole up somewhere even Fury couldn't find her, and sleep for a week.

Nat lost altitude, dropping below the passenger jet and then coming up from underneath to stay out of the jetblast from the engines. There was a tiny slice of relatively quiet air between the engine exhaust and the side of the plane. That was where the harpoon line was flapping free, and that was where Natsaha needed to be. She could feel the change in the air as she brought the fighter jet into position – the turbulence faded away, and she could hear the wind whistling through the seams of the canopy, which had never _quite_ closed tight after she took off with it open.

Once the line was right above her, Natasha did up her harness and then opened the canopy again. The six hundred mile per hour wind ripped the bubble right off its hinges and it was quickly out of sight. Nat reached up to grab the line.

In the violent air it was whipping back and forth. The first time her fingers got close to it, then end was suddenly snapped across them, cutting her across the top of her palm and drawing blood. Nat scowled and tried again. This time she made it, getting her fingers through the ice-cold carabiner still attached to the end. With all her strength she pulled it down and attached it to her harness. Then she stopped, closed her eyes and took a deep breath, rehearsing in her head. The timing of what she was about to do had to be _exactly_ right.

When she thought she was ready, she raised her right hand and hit the eject button, at the same time as her left pushed the control column sharply up.

Nat was thrown from the plane seat and all. The Yak's tail dropped, and then it was gone behind her. She was now dangling from the line attached to the side of the plane. The next thing she had to do was hut the parachute on the ejection seat free, because if she didn't it would open and the force might tear the harpoon out of the side of the jet. She pulled the line to release it – it went flying and then it, too, was long gone behind her.

There was no fallback now. Natasha had to make it to the cargo door, or else fall ten thousand feet into the ocean. Even Captain America probably couldn't land on his feet after _that_.

She grabbed the line and began dragging herself towards the door. It was a very slow process – pull herself a few inches up, then move the carabiner up the line, again and again. She tried not to rush it. The plane still had at least an hour of fuel, and Natasha could not afford a mistake.

Finally, after what felt like days, she was near enough to clip herself directly to the harpoon. When she did, she heard a creak. The adhesive was starting to come free. Natasha's heartbeat quickened – maybe she _should_ be rushing after all.

Opening the cargo door did not produce any decompression this time, either – at this altitude they didn't need it. Nat hooked her hands in the door and used the muscles in her shoulders to pull herself inside, then unclipped the carabiner and slammed the door behind her.

Done.

For a few minutes, Natasha lay on her side in the cargo hole, still buckled into the Yak's ejection seat. Her exhaustion was catching up with her... after everything she'd done in the past few hours, she simply didn't have any adrenaline left. It was only after several long minutes that she forced herself to unbuckle the harness and get up, taking a moment to let her head finish spinning and her nausea subside before she stumbled towards the emergency hatch that led up to the passenger cabin.

She pushed it open, and heard a startled cry.

"It's okay!" Natasha called up, and began to climb through. Her grip faltered – the cut on her palm was still bleeding and her fingers didn't want to stay curled – but then a pair of hands grabbed her and pulled her the rest of the way. When she saw her helper's face, Nat realized it was the flight attendant she'd first seen unconscious on the floor, all those hours ago. She managed to give the woman a smile, then staggered over to lean on an unoccupied seat as she tried to get her breath.

"Thank you," she murmured.

"Where in heaven's name did you come from?" the flight attendant asked.

"I was on the fighter," Nat replied. "I'm here to help. Give me a moment to get myself together." She couldn't remember _ever_ being this tired, even after New York – but then, after New York they'd all immediately gone out for lunch. Nat hadn't eaten or drunk anything in nearly ten hours. "I wouldn't mind a sandwich and a bottle of water, if you have them."

"Of course!" said the flight attendant – her nametag said _Callista_. She hurried forward tot he next kitchen area, with the relieved expression of somebody who'd been preparing for a heroic task but would much rather just make lunch.

A couple more people came to help Nat sit down in one of the unoccupied seats. She smiled at them, too – there was an enormous Asian man who looked like a sumo wrestler, and the tiny woman in the red Chinese blouse whom Nat had first found sleeping across the last row of seats. "Is everybody okay?" she asked. "You guys were without oxygen for a while."

"I have a splitting headache," the man said.

"You'll get over it after a good night's sleep," Nat promised him.

"Who are you?" he wanted to know, eyeing the Cyrillic script on her flight suit.

Natasha was about to answer when she felt a prick.

Her reaction was all instinct – she was on her feet and had ripped the syringe out of her arm before she even had time to realize what had happened. For a moment she stared right at the woman in the red blouse, who backed away from the ferocity of her gaze, but then she lowered her eyes to look at the syringe instead. It was empty, the plunger pushed all the way to the bottom. "What was this?" she demanded.

"No English!" the woman said quickly, in a strong accent.

" _Shì shénme ne_?" Nat repeated the question, grabbing the woman's collar and forcing her against the wall. The last thing she'd expected, after everything she'd been through already, was yet another unpleasant surprise waiting for her on this damned airplane. In that moment she was too tired to even be angry – or to care if she ended up needing to break this woman's neck. "You're not a black widow," she added. Nat wouldn't have been able to pin her so easily if she were. "Who the hell are you?"


	9. Chapter 9: Home on the Range

The air smelled like dew and new grass when the truck pulled to a stop in front of the farmhouse, and Clint Barton climbed out. He was still in the tuxedo he'd been wearing to the gala in Budapest, and when he let Natasha out of the passenger's side seat, she was dressed in the tattered remains of a black and white ballgown, with a jacket around her shoulders.

"Where are we?" she asked. Why would this man bring her here? This was a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, with no porch – there were stacks of timbers that were probably intended to build one, but nothing had actually been done with them yet. The sky was gray, and a mist of rain was falling. It wasn't enough to actually _wet_ anything, just enough to make it uncomfortably chilly and damp, overlaying everything with the rich scent of damp earth.

"Home," said Barton. He shut the truck door and climbed the makeshift cinder-block steps to knock on the house. "Laura!" he called out.

The woman who appeared in the door a moment later was a few years younger than Agent Barton, with hair just past her shoulders and brown eyes. She was in good physical shape but not _fighting_ shape, suitable for somebody who lived on a farm. The curve of her back and belly suggested that she was three or four months pregnant. If it came to a fight, the abdomen would be a good vulnerable point, Natasha thought. A pregnant woman would act to protect the fetus before herself.

The woman – Laura – smiled and stepped down into Barton's arms. Then she saw his guest, and stiffened in surprise. "Who's she?"

"This is Natasha," said Barton. "I was sent to Budapest to kill her, but the two of us actually ended up preventing a war. It's a long story," he said, with a sheepish smile.

Was _that_ what had happened? Natasha supposed it was, although she wouldn't have described it that way. Clearly the two of them had very different perspectives on the events of the past week.

"I see," said the woman, and then whispered, "what have I told you about bringing home strays?"

They didn't realize Natasha's hearing was better than normal. "She's fully trained and won't shed on the furniture," Barton whispered back. "I'm going to talk to Fury about her, but she needs someplace to stay in the mean time. Somewhere Interpol and the FBI won't come looking for her."

"So you brought her to _our_ house?" asked Laura.

"Yes. Because it's not on anybody's radar," Barton said. He spoke more loudly. "Natasha, this is my wife, Laura."

It was at that moment that Natasha realized she had, for almost the first time in her life, no idea what to do in this situation. She knew how to behave at a party when an important man introduced her to his wife and she had to look like a harmless floozy. She knew how to behave when meeting a woman who had something she needed, how to ingratiate herself so she would get help and sympathy. She knew how to flirt with lesbians and bisexuals, how to get noticed, how to blend in, how to do almost anything...

But she didn't know what to say when the man who'd just saved her life was introducing her to the wife she hadn't expected him to have, and from whom she didn't particularly want anything except food and shelter. Natasha had never had to do that. She was _aware_ of how human beings interacted with each other casually and could duplicate it, but it was play-acting to her. She'd never had to honestly introduce herself. She'd never have to _make a friend_.

So she said, "hello." It was bland, nothing. A formulaic greeting without any meaning, but it was all she had.

"Hello," said Laura Barton, and came down the steps to offer a hand. "Won't you come in? You can get cleaned up."

 _Coming in_ was access to the house and any information or valuables it contained, although from the look of the place Natasha doubted it held much of either. _Cleaning up_ was a chance to change her clothes, her hair, her whole apparent persona. It was as if they were opening the door for her to take advantage of them and flee.

"Thank you," she said. She grabbed her purse and followed them inside.

Barton guided her to the stairs, while Laura went into the kitchen. As Natasha climbed the steps, she looked down and saw a little boy, about four years old, gazing up at her. He did not speak, and plainly did not know what to make of this odd stranger. Natasha said nothing, either.

Once upstairs, Natasha took a shower and washed her hair, which took less than three minutes. Then she dried herself quickly and put on the clothes Barton had left for her – a blouse and jeans that must have been Laura's, and a hooded sweatshirt that was probably his own. In her bare feet, she came softly and silently back down to see what the couple had done while she was out of their sight.

Laura was still in the kitchen. She'd been talking to her husband, but their conversation was covered this time by the whistling of the kettle. When Natasha walked into the room, she was pouring hot water into a pot to make tea.

"That was quick," said Laura.

"I'm efficient," Natasha replied. Whether it was theft, murder, or simply washing up, she did it quickly and quietly and without fuss.

She sat down at the table, and the little boy approached her from the living room. He was holding a plush dinosaur. Once again, he didn't say anything, and once again, Natasha simply looked back at him, the two of them unsure how to deal with each other. Barton had told her to be herself, but she didn't know who that was.

So she tried again: "hello."

"Say hi," Barton urged his son.

"Hi," said the boy. "I'm Cooper. This is Pinky." He held up the dinosaur, which was, in fact, pink.

Natasha had been taught that children should be indulged. Talk to their toy animals and give them candy. Play their games, and they will play yours. "Hello, Pinky," she said.

"Do you take milk and sugar in your tea?" Laura asked.

"Just sugar, thank you." Natasha looked at Barton for advice, but he just shrugged, not understanding what she was asking. Was this who she was, she wondered, when she had no role to play? Nothing but an automaton, parroting polite phrases? Maybe it was... in which case, the much more troubling question was whether she had ever been anything else.

* * *

For the next several days, Natasha drifted around the Barton family farm like a ghost. She would wake up at five in the morning listening to the birds chirruping outside, and would be unable to fall asleep again even though Laura assured her she was welcome to lie in. Instead, she would get up and walk outside as the sun rose. It was strange place, this farm. Natasha was an urban creature, mostly, but she could survive in the wilderness if she had to. The farm, however, was neither.

There were trees, rustling in the early morning breeze, but they were small and soft, with wildflowers blooming between them, and home to nothing worse than a feral cat or two. There were plains, but they grew young wheat and oats instead of harsh wild grasses. Behind the house was Laura's vegetable garden, where she tended tomatoes and pumpkins and towering sunflowers. The cows were docile and kept to themselves, the dog napped in the sunshine all day, and the chickens scratched in the yard.

In the bustle and crowd of a city, Natasha could vanish easily. The same was true in the wild where there was nobody. Here, however, there was a tiny, closed community, a _family_ , which she was not part of. A place where she did not fit. For somebody who'd spent her whole life learning how to fit in anywhere, it was unsettling. Natasha simply did not know how to function in an environment where nothing was a threat to her.

On the fourth day, Barton left to go meet with Director Fury. He told Natasha to wait at the farm for them. She didn't know if she _wanted_ to meet the man who'd sent Barton to kill her, but the farm would be easy to escape from if she needed to, so she agreed.

Since she was restless with no tasks to perform, she began helping out as best she could. She helped Laura to weed her garden, fed the cows and chickens, picked apples, and cooked meals. They were all odd things for Natasha to do, and she often felt as if she were standing at a great distance, watching herself do all these quiet, _normal_ things without actually participating. If she'd had to fight somebody, to steal information, to do any of the things she'd been _trained_ to do, she could have felt engaged with it. But this? She had nothing to bring to this.

In the evenings, Laura sat and did her sewing or other handicrafts, and Cooper played with his toys or with the dog. Natasha just watched. She noticed that in addition to the quilts and blouses Laura liked to make, there was a big knitted afghan draped over the sofa. Cooper would use it and the cushions to make forts, which Lucky would knock down, apparently worried that the boy was buried and suffocating. The afghan intrigued Natasha, because the design of it reminded her of Baba Galina's old shawl.

She'd kept the shawl after her escape from the orphanage. That was probably foolish, since it was of no use to her, and yet she couldn't bear to destroy it or leave it behind. Instead, she held it against her chest as she slept in the Bartons' guest room, in this strange bed she couldn't shackle herself to. The shawl smelled of lavender and cigarettes and cheap vodka, and the scents brought back flashes of another life. Of crying in the snow while a stranger held her and patted her back. Of being served tea and having a skinned knee bandaged. A voice telling her fairy stories: _Father Frost_ , _The Giant Turnip_ , _The Princess who Never Laughed_.

"Another!" she'd pleaded. "Another!"

"No, _Natushka_ ," a gentle voice had laughed. "You must sleep!"

And she _was_ sleeping, with rain drumming against the roof and windows of the farmhouse, when another voice woke her.

"Natasha!" Laura hissed in the darkness. "Are you awake?"

She opened her eyes and sat up, and the first thing she smelled was blood. "What? Is something wrong?" she asked. For a moment she thought of the escape routes she'd planned over the past few days, but then those sank away to be replaced by another thought, one that ought to have been utterly foreign to anybody from the Red Room. Clint Barton had saved Natasha's life in Budapest. If she had the chance now to protect the family he loved, she would do it. The weapons and hiding places in the home would do for Laura and Cooper as well as for Natasha alone.

"It's Posey. The cow," said Laura. "She's trying to calve, but the calf hasn't turned. Clint's not here, I can't get in touch with the vet, and my arms aren't long enough!"

A cow? Natasha blinked. This woman had woken her in the middle of the night to help a _cow_? She stared at Laura for a moment and then, by the light of the flashlight the other woman was holding, saw the desperation in her eyes. This was important to her. "I don't know what to do," Natasha said. Of all the things she'd ever been taught, helping a cow to give birth was not one of them.

"I'll talk you through it," Laura promised.

Natasha put on a sports bra and washed her arms as Laura directed her. As soon as she entered the barn, her nose was assaulted by the stink of blood and sweat and wet straw, and she found the cow lying on the floor and panting in exhaustion. The animal was obviously in pain and Natasha, who'd been long taught to ignore suffering in humans, found herself surprisingly affected by the signs of it in this animal. At Laura's direction, she knelt down behind the cow.

"Her muscles will contract and you'll just have to let them," Laura said. "See if you can find the calf's legs. If they're stuck behind the hip bones, you'll have to pull them out."

Natasha was reluctant at first to put her hand up inside a living animal, but this was what Laura needed her to do – this was her _mission_. The inside of the cow was warm and slippery, like warm gelatin, and as she reached in she felt a contraction. It squeezed her arm until her fingers went numb, and she couldn't move again until it was finished. With her arm in almost to the shoulder, she found something with a different texture, like coarse wet hair. For a moment she had no idea what she might be touching, but then her fingers discovered the base of the tail, and the legs folded up against the cow's spine.

"It's upside-down," she said. "The legs are stuck." There was no polite parroting now. Only the need to exchange information.

"Okay." Laura knelt down next to her. "Stay calm. Push it back into the cervix as far as you can with one hand, and then use your other to free the legs. It has to come out hooves-first. Then as soon as you can get the legs out of the birth canal, we both have to pull. If the umbilical cord breaks before the nose and mouth are free, the calf could suffocate."

Natasha's hands could bend metal. They could kill or permanently disable a large man with a blow in the right spot. This didn't require power, though – this required gentleness, which was something she was unaccustomed to. The calf didn't want to move. Perhaps it was frightened. When Natasha tried to rearrange its limbs it twitched and kicked and hurt its mother, who bellowed in surprise. At last she got a hold of one hoof and tried to maneuver it through the cervix. She'd almost made it when the slippery little animal struggled out of her fingers and returned to its original position.

She felt her eyes sting with tears of frustration, but she bit her lip and focused. Natasha had rarely failed at anything she'd set out to do. She had no intention of failing at this.

At last, after what felt like hours of grabbing, losing hold, and grabbing again, the first leg came free. With that done, it was easier to get the others. The cow's muscles contracted, and calf slid towards Natasha.

As soon as the hooves began to show, Laura grabbed them and they pulled together. In a few more seconds the entire calf – a male – slid free and landed in a heap of blood, straw, and goo on the floor of the barn.

"He's alive!" Laura exclaimed in delight.

Natasha just sat there, stunned. There was blood and torn amniotic sac everywhere, and the calf looked very much dead to _her_. It was still and glassy-eyed, its little nose blue instead of pink, but Laura had put a hand under one of its forelegs, and was nodding in time with what must have been a faint heartbeat.

While Natasha watched, Laura held the calf's mouth closed and cleaned out its nostrils with straw. After a moment the little animal suddenly coughed, and then began to take weak, whistling breaths for itself. The cow, meanwhile, struggled to its feet and staggered over, tired but determined, to begin licking its baby clean.

"There we go," said Laura approvingly, as the calf raised its head to meet its mother's tongue. "He'll be okay. Let's go get cleaned up."

"Are you sure?" asked Natasha. The calf still looked so weak.

"I'm sure," said Laura.

She helped Natasha to her feet, and the two of them stumbled back into the house with the sun just beginning to rise. Both women showered thoroughly, then Laura made bacon and eggs while Natasha started the coffee maker.

Natasha's hands were trembling. She'd never done anything like that before. Black widows were made to _end_ lives, and here... she'd just saved one and begun another. If that calf had not been born it would have died, and the cow would have expired from exhaustion soon after. Now they were both alive, and Laura Barton said they were going to be okay – because of Natasha.

And during the time when she'd been doing that, Natasha had been _there_. She hadn't been drifting far away as she had the past few days, never quite engaging with the world. She'd been a _part_ of that.

Now, however, she was floating away again. The room was beginning to blur as she sat down slowly at the kitchen table. She could smell the bacon cooking and the coffee brewing, hear the sizzle of the fat in the pan, but it was as if her ears were full of cotton. Then, slowly, she leaned forward, put her face in her hands, and began to cry.

Natasha had no idea where the well of emotion had come from. It wasn't only the birth of the calf – it just burst up out of her like a geyser and overflowed through her eyes. Maybe it was the grief of every loss she'd never been allowed to mourn. The parents she didn't even remember, who had abandoned her for reasons she would never know. Baba Galina, who'd promised to take her home and had never gotten the chance. The twins from Chernobyl, who'd only wanted to be free. The American pilot she'd shot to save him from the Gulag. The children who'd burned in the orphanage, and the uncomprehending terror they must have felt in their last moments. It all ran over.

"Oh, honey." Laura came and put her arms around Natasha from behind. "It's okay. It's okay."

But Natasha couldn't stop. She wasn't even sure she wanted to. All the tears she'd been taught to bottle up all her life – they were all coming now.

Laura continued to hold her, rubbing her back and murmuring in her ear that it would be okay. The dog came and put its head in her lap. Slowly, Natasha began to run out of tears. She could taste the salt in the back of her throat, and feel her nose running. The skin around her eyes was tender and crusted.

"Here." Laura set a cup of coffee down in front of her. "Do you feel better now?"

"I don't know," said Natasha. She wasn't sure if she knew _anything_ anymore.

After breakfast, Laura went to get Cooper up and had him feed the chickens, then returned tot he kitchen to sit with her guest. She had a set of knitting needles, and was making a baby sweater.

"Did you knit the afghan in the living room?" Natasha asked. She hadn't actually seen anyone knitting since Baba Galina, all those years ago. It was not a skill taught in the Red Room.

"No, my grandmother did," said Laura. "She taught me to knit when I was little. She said it was the only way to make me sit still." She smiled as she turned the needles around to begin another row. "I love making things with my hands. There's something very satisfying about it. Do you know how to knit?"

"No," said Natasha, but a bit of hope rose in her. "I've got... just a moment." She stood, and ran up the stairs to the guest room, where she pulled Baba Galina's old shawl out from under her pillow. Natasha returned to the kitchen and held it up for Laura to see. "Do you know how to make this?"

"That's an Orenburg shawl!" said Laura. "I've got a book about it!" She put her project aside and went to shuffle through a bookshelf, until she found a well-thumbed paperback. "This has some patterns in it. They're not exactly like yours, but they'll give you some idea of the motifs." She offered the book to Natasha. "Would you like me to teach you?"

There were a dozen replies Natasha might have made to such an offer in another situation, if she'd had some sort of a goal. Right now, however, her only goal was learning to do this thing Baba Galina had never gotten a chance to show her. So she simply said, "yes."

* * *

An hour later, Natasha was sitting up on an ottoman in the living room. Cooper was playing with his toy trucks on the floor, and Laura was on the sofa facing Natasha, teaching her to pick up stitches from a knitted edge – a vital skill for the type of shawls described in the book. That was where Barton found them when he opened the door.

"Whatcha doin'?" he asked, as the dog came bounding over to greet him. He rubbed the animal's head, then turned to scoop up Cooper and give him a hug.

"Knitting lesson." Laura put down her own needles and went to give her husband a kiss on the cheek.

Barton grinned. "I bring you home a deadly assassin and you teach her a craft that involves sharp pointy things?"

"She's picking it up quickly," said Laura. "She's got very good fingers."

They both laughed, and hearing them, Natasha felt herself smile. That surprised her – she couldn't remember the last time she'd smiled without _deciding_ to, but seeing these two people who loved each other make jokes, and knowing that she had contributed to their happiness was... as corny as it sounded, it was _heartwarming_. It literally felt warm inside her chest to see it, while at the same time it _ached_. It _ached_ to know that she could never have that herself, and that was in the same place as the warmth. No wonder people thought emotions happened in the heart.

Natasha had always known she _had_ a heart – she could feel it beating. But god, she hadn't had any idea it actually _worked_.

Barton gave his wife another kiss and then came to sit down on the sofa where she'd been a moment earlier. "How are you doing?" he asked Natasha.

"She delivered Posey's calf this morning," said Laura. "I checked on him an hour ago – he's on his feet now and nursing."

"Is that a fact?" Barton asked, looking at Natasha with the same sort of surprised respect she'd seen several times in Budapest.

"She talked me through it," Natasha said. "I've never done anything quite like that before." It was okay to talk, she was starting to realize. Talking didn't need to happen for a reason. She could _just talk_ , the way ordinary people did, if that was what she wanted.

"Congratulations," said Barton. "Did you give the little guy a name?"

"Clint." Laura put a hand on his arm. "I said if it were a male I wanted to try making my own cheese."

"We're not using somebody's first calf for rennet," said Barton firmly. "You got a name for him, Nat?"

She shrugged. Natasha had no idea how to give a thing a name... she'd never even been any good at coming up with pseudonyms for _herself_. "Cooper can give him a name," she decided. If it were a privilege the child would enjoy it, and might be better at it than she was.

Barton smiled. "Sure. Trust it to a kid who names his dinosaur Pinky." But then his face became serious again. "I've got Fury with me – he's waiting outside. You can talk to him if you want, or he can leave. But I gotta warn you, Nat, if you turn down his help, you're probably going to jail."

Natasha wasn't worried about that – she was confident that she could escape from any prison this Fury could put her in. But once she was out, she would have to start running again. Running from the Red Room, running from SHIELD, running from the dozen other organizations that wanted her dead or wanted her working for them, all the while trying to find work to keep body together with whatever she had instead of a soul, never knowing if there were any place she could rest. She was so _tired_ of that. If she went to see Fury, if she agreed to his terms... maybe she could stop. She could do more things, perhaps, like learning to knit and delivering baby cows. Maybe she and Barton could even save the world again.

"I'll talk to him," she decided.

What Natasha had learned about Nick Fury from rumors and shadows in the past few years had always made him sound terrifying. She was surprised, then, to find that he was older than she'd expected, at least in his fifties. He was, as the stories said, missing an eye, although there was no trace of a bionic arm that she could see (and she'd seen more than one). He looked stern, but not unkind.

"Miss Romanov," he said, offering her a hand. "Nice to finally meet you in person."

"Mr. Fury," she replied. "You're not what I expected."

"I'm gonna assume that's a compliment," he said. "Now listen. Barton here has told me some pretty impressive things about you, and to be honest I was already pretty impressed – if I wasn't, I wouldn't have sent him. I'm here to give you an opportunity."

"An opportunity to stay out of prison?" asked Natasha. As much as she wanted a space to breathe, she wasn't going to take anything offered her without question. Only a fool would sign a contract she hadn't read.

"An opportunity to do some good in the world," said Fury. "You've already done good with Barton. How did it feel, making that choice after all the things you've been _forced_ to do?"

A glib answer floated on Natasha's tongue, until she reminded herself that she wasn't doing that anymore. She was here now. She'd just brought a new life into the world. She could do anything she wanted. She'd always been able to be anything she had to... now she could _choose_ what to be. And what she chose to be, at that moment, was honest. "Surprising," she said. The Prime Minister of Hungary had kissed her hand and told her she was a hero, and she'd almost wanted to laugh at him. If he'd known who she really was, he probably would have had her shot.

"You surprised us all," said Fury.

"She didn't surprise me." Barton smiled a bit.

"Nothing surprises you," Fury told him.

"I've seen it before," Barton said. "That person who doesn't realize what they've got in them until they need it."

"You mean your _wife's_ seen it before," Fury snorted, and turned back to Natasha. "It comes with conditions, of course. There'll be training and testing, and believe me, it's not the kind of training and testing you can fake your way through like a polygraph or a truth serum. We've got telepaths who can tease the truth out of you while you're still coming up with a lie. We've got supercomputers that can analyze everything you say in less time than it takes you to say it. If you're going straight with SHIELD, then you're going _straight_ , do you understand?"

"Yes, I do," said Natasha, and once again she almost laughed. The idea of _her_ , of all people, telling the _truth_... she didn't even know what it was half the time. "What does SHIELD do, Agent Fury, when you're not searching for defected Soviet spies?" Defected, that was the word. She'd almost said _defective_.

He smiled a little. "We save the world, like you did in Budapest last week. Miss Romanov – let me tell you about the Avenger Initiative."


	10. Chapter 10: The Impossible Landing

"Who the hell are you?" Natasha demanded.

The other woman looked at the syringe in her hand, and then at Nat's arm – the needle had broken, and was still embedded in her flesh. She _must_ have realized she couldn't deny it, but she dropped the syringe and put out her lower lip. "I didn't drug you," she said.

"Then what _did_ you do?" asked Nat. She was trying to take stock of her body and her reactions, but it wasn't much good. She was already so exhausted that it was difficult to tell what might be a drug and what might just be that she already felt like she'd been thrown into a threshing machine.

"It's to take a sample, not to inject," the woman said. "We knew Black Widows would be on this plane. I was to obtain a blood sample, so that we could analyze the steroids they give you."

Natasha's immediate reaction was a derisive snort: _steroids_ had nothing to do with it! A moment later, however, her brain made the connection – she knew who, or at least _what_ , this woman was. The first _Hu Xian_ had started appearing in the late 80s. These were China's attempt to create its own version of the black widow program, and their spies had spent ears trying to wheedle their way into the Red Room and get a hold of the USSR's work on bio-enhancements. _Hu Xian_ themselves weren't super-soldiers, or at least they hadn't been the last time Natasha had news about them, but they _were_ lethal assassins.

Not being drugged was good news, but even so, Nat knew she couldn't handle another fight right now, not against a trained opponent. She wasn't even sure she could handle landing a plane. She'd _almost_ managed to reason with Triinu, maybe she could reason with this woman.

"Can you fly a plane?" she asked.

"No." The _Hu Xian_ looked honestly surprised by the question. "I have rescue waiting."

"Then let me do it," said Nat. "Once we're on the ground, I'll give you the sample you want, and you can go. I won't turn you in, but I need to save these passengers, okay?"

The _Hu Xian_ was not impressed. "They warned me you would try to trick me," she sad.

"I'm too tired to trick anybody right now," Nat said. "Let me land the plane. Once we're on the ground, I'll go with you to Chongqing and you can take all the samples you need, but let me save the passengers. That is the _only_ thing I am asking of you."

The woman glared at her a moment, then grabbed her wrists with both hands. "You under arrest!" she said, in broken English.

The passengers had gathered around, crammed into the narrow aisles or peering over and between the seats, while Natasha and the _Hu Xian_ talked – but few if any of them had understood a word of the conversation. Now, as Nat tried to free her hands from the other woman's grip, the stewardess pushed her way to the front of the crowd and tried to separate the two. "What do you mean, she's under arrest?" she asked.

"I don't know what she's..." Nat began.

The _Hu Xian_ ducked under Nat's arm, twisting it up behind her back, and forced her to her knees. It was a lock Nat knew how to get out of, but the other woman had unfortunately chosen her somewhat battered _left_ arm to work with, and the pain made her vision momentarily blank out white. When she became aware again, five or six people were holding on to her while the _Hu Xian_ spoke calmly to the stewardess.

"I am federal agent in China." The woman pulled out a badge and waved it, then put it away before anybody could take too close a look. "We are looking for plane thief, knocks out the passengers with drugs and sells plane to third-world countries. Passengers mean nothing." She glared at Natasha. "We find _her_."

"That's not true," said Natasha calmly. There were three people hanging onto her – two large blond men who looked like they might have been brothers, one in a _Ghostbusters_ t-shirt and the other in a _Hunger Games_ one, and a hulking Asian man who looked like a sumo wrestler even if he wasn't actually one by trade. She could have taken any one of them if she'd had any mobility, but at the moment, she did not. If the _Hu Xian_ wouldn't see reason, however, maybe these men would. "Listen to me," she said to them. "I'm..."

"You're _who_?" the _Hu Xian_ interrupted in Cantonese. "What are you going to tell them? That you're a former Soviet agent who now calls herself a superhero? That will sound twenty times more absurd than my story!"

"Fuck you!" Nat replied in English. The men had her by her arms and shoulders, but her legs were free. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she lashed out to wrap them around the woman's neck. Nat no longer _cared_ who she had to kill in order to get there. She would snap the _Hu Xian_ 's neck and then she would damned well land this plane.

But she'd forgotten about the passengers themselves. Half a dozen more, with the terrified stewardess, ran in to save the _Hu Xian_ and help hold Natasha down. These people were frightened and a lot of them were probably still feeling ill from the effects of oxygen deprivation. They knew they were on a plane with no pilot and were afraid they were going to die. If they overpowered this woman they'd been told was a threat, that was an _action_ they could take to save themselves. When the only known alternative was sitting there impotently waiting for the fuel to run out, being able to _do_ something was a powerful motivation.

"Can anybody else here fly a plane?" Nat shouted as they dogpiled her. She already knew the answer – if anybody could, they would already have been in the cockpit. If there _had_ been any trained pilots among the passengers, the widows had probably killed them along with the crew. "Let me try! Does it matter where I'm going as long as..."

The sumo wrestler put a hand over Nat's mouth. Automatically, she bit it. He reacted, probably just as automatically, by kicking her in the face. Something in Nat's nose went _crunch_ , and she tasted blood.

"Tie her up," the _Hu Xian_ ordered. "I will call Interpol and arrange to have the plane escorted to landing." She unzipped her purse and took out a cell phone.

She had rescue waiting, she'd said. She was going to take Nat and bail out, leaving everybody else to die.

" _Stop_!" a new voice shrieked.

Nat looked up, blinking through a haze of red, trying to figure out why the shout had sounded so familiar. She couldn't see the speaker, but a figure was shoving its way through the gathered passengers.

"Get out of my way!" the voice ordered, "or I will stab you with my knitting needles, and then I'll be _really mad_ , because blood _stains_!"

Natasha laughed out loud, startling the people holding on to her and thoroughly confusing the stewardess. "Coca cola!" she called, licking blood from around her mouth. "How many times have I told you? Coca cola within ten minutes destroys the protein before it can bond with the fabric?"

The figure finally made it to the front, and there was Laura Barton, looking like a small, furious guardian angel in a home-made blouse, with her knitting standing in for a flaming sword. "What is _wrong_ with everybody?" she asked. "Don't you read the newspapers?"

"Ma'am, return to your seat," said the _Hu Xian_. Her accent had evaporated, Natasha noticed.

But Laura wasn't the sort who blindly obeyed orders from anybody – not her husband, not SHIELD agents, and definitely not complete strangers. "Are you blind?" she asked. "This is the Black Widow! She saved all your lives in New York just a week ago and now you're going to throw her in jail? She's here to _save_ us!"

The urge to laugh was stronger than ever. It must have been the exhaustion, but somehow it seemed really funny in that particular moment that what was about to save the day was not fighting or super-heroics, but a much-needed cold splash of Ohio farm wife common sense.

"Well, who's _she_?" the man in the Ghostbusters shirt asked, in a strong Aussie accent. He pointed to the _Hu Xian_.

"This is ridiculous..." the _Hu Xian_ began.

"You learned English pretty quick, didn't you?" Natasha broke in. "She's some kind of spy who's here after me. I don't care what happens to her as long as you keep her out of my way. I have to land the plane." She looked around at the people holding her. "Do you guys _mind_?"

"Let her go," Laura ordered.

"Hold her!" the _Hu Xian_ insisted, her English suddenly broken again.

"Can anybody else here fly a god-damned _plane_?" asked Nat.

That, finally, got through. One by one, reluctant, the men released Nat and set her back on her feet again. Laura hurried forward to give her a wad of kleenex for her broken nose while everybody else, including the _Hu Xian_ , simply stared.

"Can I get that sandwich?" Nat asked the stewardess.

"Get her a bag of ice, too, if there's any left," Laura added.

The woman nodded and hurried for the nearest kitchen area.

"Sit down and put your head between your knees," Laura ordered, helping Nat to do so. "What are you _wearing_?"

"A Russian navy flight suit," said Natasha. "It's not the worst choice of clothing I've made today. Never mind that, though." Despite the instructions to keep her head down, Nat looked urgently up at her friend. "Are _you_ okay? What about Cooper and Lila?" Natasha had been there the day Lila was born. The last thing she wanted was to think she'd been elsewhere when the girl _died_.

"We're fine," Laura promised. "The kids are asleep – I told them Dad would come for us." The fact that Clint had not in fact shown didn't seem to bother her at all. Natasha was just as good, if not better. "I have a screaming headache."

"That's the hypoxia," said Natasha. "You'll feel much better after a good night's sleep." The stewardess came with the sandwich and ice. Natasha thanked her and took several big bites, forcing them down her throat with bottled water, while Laura put the ice on the back of her neck to restrict the blood flow to her broken nose. "I need your help, Laura. You can fly that crop dusting plane, right?"

Laura was horrified. "I can't fly _this_!" she protested. "I shouldn't even fly the duster, because I don't have a license. Believe me, if I trusted myself with the plane I'd have landed it already!"

"Okay, okay!" Nat put a hand on her shoulder. "Deep breaths. Landing is complicated and I'm really tired," she said. "I need a co-pilot I trust. You already have some idea what you're doing, so I'll talk you through the rest."

"Talk me through it?" Laura stared. " _Talk me through_ landing a 747?"

"It's not any harder than delivering a baby cow," Nat promised her.

Laura blinked, then laughed. "Okay."

Natasha finished her sandwich and grabbed another water bottle as Laura helped her to her feet. The passengers didn't try to intervene again as she made her way forward – maybe they were just too confused. The _Hu Xian_ seemed to think her moment had passed, and was hanging back, perhaps plotting her next move. Nat decided she didn't care, as long as she was allowed to land the damn plane. "Yelena told me she put a bomb on the hydraulics so we won't be able to land," Natasha said as they climbed the stairs to the cockpit. "But it looks like the autopilot's kept it on course for the past few hours, so I think she lied to piss me off." The widows' mission had been to bring back Natasha, and destroying the plane would be totally unnecessary to that. The Red Room didn't waste resources. "Why hasn't anybody tried to contact the ground?"

"Have you seen the dashboard on this thing?" Laura asked. "Nobody dares touch it."

At the top of the steps was Business Class. There were passengers there, too, but they didn't seem to be aware of what had just happened in Economy. Some were praying. Others were crying. A black woman was reading stories to three children, two of them white and one Filipino. An elderly man was sobbing over the body of his wife, unconscious in her seat, while a male flight attendant held his hand. Natasha stopped to talk to him.

"What happened?" she asked.

"She realized there was no pilot," the flight attendant explained. He offered Natasha a napkin, on which someone had written _I'm sorry, I don't want to die in a plane crash._ "Her husband said she's on phenobarbital. Apparently she took the whole bottle while he was in the washroom."

"How long ago?" Natasha asked.

"Maybe an hour and a half?" The flight attendant shrugged.

Laura nodded. "Go to the galley," she said. "Mix mustard and salt with water and force her to drink it – that'll induce vomiting and get rid of any drugs that are still in her stomach."

"Then just keep her breathing," Nat put in. "If there are any un-used oxygen masks give her one of those. If you can continue getting oxygen to her brain until we reach help, she should survive."

The flight attendant nodded. He patted the husband's hand, then got up to go to the galley.

"Any other emergencies up here?" asked Natasha, looking around.

There was no reply. Nobody knew what to make of her.

"Who are you?" one of the children asked. "Are you the pilot?"

"Yes, she is," said Laura. "She's here to land the plane."

They pushed aside a few pieces of the broken door, and Nat sat down in the pilot's seat. The controls _were_ intimidating, but it would be fine when Laura had her attention in the right places. Natasha was going to need the help. Having something in her stomach made her feel much more awake, but she'd still had a hell of a day and would be prone to making bad decisions. She needed somebody to double-check.

"You sit there," she told Laura, pointing to the co-pilot's chair. "The QRH – quick reference handbook – is hanging on a hook there. It has instructions for emergency procedures. Other stuff I'll tell you how to do. It's not as hard as it looks."

"Right," said Laura, clearly terrified.

Natasha did up her seat belt again. Hopefully the _Hu Xian_ had enough sense to stay put, but Nat didn't want to count on that. She knew perfectly well that survival instinct could and sometimes did take second place to a mission. As with her own colleagues, she had to retain control of the airplane at all costs. She put on the headset, and flicked the radio on.

Immediately there was an electrical smell. Nat quickly reached and turned it off again.

"What was that?" asked Laura, eyes wide.

Then there was a bang. It felt like going over a pothole in a car – there was a sudden jerk, and the plane began to list to the right. People screamed in the cabin as half a dozen warning lights came on in the cockpit, including one to tell them that the number three engine was on fire.

Natasha cursed. Of course – of _course_ Yelena had hooked her bomb into the electrical system, to be activated when somebody tried to call for help, because Yelena Belova was, and had always been, a sadist. Nat didn't know if it were because she'd witnessed the horrors of Chernobyl at the age of two, or if she'd just been born a psychopath... right now it didn't matter. But god, Nat hoped she never saw Yelena again, because if she did, she would not be responsible for what came next.

"Natasha! Nat, what do I do?" asked Laura frantically.

Nat tried to steer the plane out of its roll, but it didn't want to respond. She checked the dashboard, and her stomach dank. There were three separate hydraulic systems on the plane to run the steering. It shouldn't be possible for all three of them to lose pressure at the same time, but the engineers who designed it had been thinking of random accidents and failures, not vengeful black widows with bombs.

First things first. Prioritize. "Get the flight manual," Natasha ordered. "Find instructions for shutting down the number two and three engines." Only number three was on fire, but shutting down number two as well would keep the thrust even, and she had an idea how she might be able to steer.

Laura flipped through the book. "Here it is! I found it!"

"Give it to me." Nat grabbed it and began working through the checklist. "You take this." She grabbed the radio and turned it on again – hopefully all bombs had already gone off, and the radio itself had only been a source of electricity and was not damaged. "If you can, call Mayday and ask for the nearest runway. We don't care what country it's in. Air Traffic Controllers all speak English."

Nat winced a little as she hit the radio switch again, but this time it seemed to work just fine. That was a small mercy. She found the frequency she'd used earlier to talk to Espinoza. "Try now. Mayday, identify us as AA113, and state what's wrong."

Laura licked her lips. "Uh, Mayday. This is AA113. We just had a bomb go off on board and we need to land."

There was no answer. Natasha continued shutting down the bad engines, and nodded at Laura to try again.

"Mayday!" Laura repeated. "Can anybody hear me?"

"AA113," said a voice with a thick Spanish accent. "This is Manila. I can hear you."

"Oh, thank god!" said Laura. "Um, this is AA113, we just had a bomb go off on board and we need to land! It's an emergency!"

There was the sound of machinery winding down. The warning that number three was on fire stopped beeping, but the plane was still listing to the right. The rudder must be stuck. Now that Natasha had the same thrust on both sides, however, she throttled back the remaining left engine so that the right one could compensate for the rudder hardover. For a moment nothing seemed to happen, but then slowly, the plane began to settled back into level flight.

"Okay," she said aloud. So she could steer. Not very _well_ , but it was a start. Next problem – they were gaining altitude, when they ought to be losing it.

"We can get you a runway in Laoag," the control tower said, and called out the numbers for the new heading. "Runway is twenty-four hundred metres. Is that enough?"

Laura looked at Nat.

"It'll have to do," said Natasha.

"Yeah, that's fine," Laura said.

"Tell them we need emergency vehicles." Natasha moved the throttles to try to turn the plane left.

It didn't work. With the rudder stuck, even with the right wing engine at maximum and the left at idle, the airflow would not allow a left turn.

Nat forced herself to keep thinking. If she couldn't turn thirty degrees, then she would have to turn three hundred and thirty. She throttled up the left engine again, and the plane began making a long, lazy loop to the right.

Now they were losing altitude again. Without the hydraulics Nat couldn't control the elevators any more than she could the rudder, and could do nothing about the plane's pitch. It had gained altitude as it gained speed when she adjusted the engines, but now they had less power and it was falling. Left to its own devices, the aircraft would continue to bob up and down in sinusoidal motion as lift and gravity alternately gained the upper hand.

But gravity always won in the end. They needed to get to the ground as soon as possible.

"Ask them for our position," Nat said. "We need to know how far away we are."

Laura nodded. "Uh, control? Where are we?" she asked. "Can you see is?"

"Affirmative, 113," said the controller. "You're not a pilot, are you?"

"I can fly a crop duster," Laura said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. "My friend is flying the plane. She's a pilot. I'm just doing the radio stuff so she can focus." Her voice said that she desperately hoped that was all Nat intended to ask of her.

"All right, tell her you're northeast of Babuyan," said the voice. "About three hundred kilometres from the airport."

The plane was moving very slowly for a transoceanic jet because of the need to stay at low altitude. Three hundred kilometers would take them nearly forty minutes, and without pitch control, they didn't have that kind of time. "Ask him what the weather's like down there," said Natasha.

What had the people in Economy thought of the bomb? Had they decided it was proof that Nat was the bad guy after all? Might they be up here at any moment to remove her from the pilot's seat?

"My friend wants a weather report," Laura said.

"Twenty-seven degrees Celcius at Laoag," said the voice. "Humidity ninety-two percent, winds five kilometers per hour. Clear skies, zero chance of precipitation."

High humidity and low winds would mean calm seas, Natasha thought. That was good. "All right," she said. "We'll _try_ for Laoag. If we can't make it, we'll have to ditch in the ocean." She glanced at Laura, who nodded. Nat didn't really think they had a realistic chance of getting there, but pretending they did would help Laura stay calm.

It wasn't a pretense she could keep up for very long, however. As the plane slid down the next slope of its roller coaster ride, Natasha spotted islands in the sea below them, and tried to arrange them on a mental map. That would be Babuyan right in front of them, and several more specks of land in between themselves and the big island of Luzon, where the airport was. Laoag wasn't on the north coast, through – once over Luzon, they would still have seventy kilometers to go.

That wasn't acceptable. They needed to land _now_. The longer they were in the air, the less control Nat had over the plane.

"Are we gonna make it?" asked Laura. She sounded like she knew what the answer would be.

Nat shook her head. "We're in the water," she said. "The way we're going up and down, I don't trust us not to crash on our way in to Laoag. Let them know."

Laura nodded. "My friend says she's going to land the plane on the ocean. We won't make it to the airport."

"Understood," said the tower. "We'll get everybody out of your way."

The man sounded calm, because like any pilot or air traffic controller, he had been _trained_ to stay calm. Panic helped nobody. But he would understand the same thing Natasha did – that water landings in large aircraft were all but impossible. It was the angle of approach that was the problem. If she came in too steep, the engines would be the first thing to hit the water, and the drag they produced would bring the whole plane to a stop so suddenly it might break apart. Too shallow, and the tail would skim the water and tear off, letting water in and drowning everyone on board. The angle, she knew, was eleven degrees.

"Natasha," said Laura. "Something's happening."

Nat looked out the window, in the direction her friend was pointing. Something _was_ happening, but it was hard to say what. The water ahead of them looked strange, as if something were emerging from it. It took a moment, but Nat recognized the effect. She was watching adaptive optics shut down. A hellicarrier was decloaking.

Quickly, she switched the radio to a SHIELD channel and grabbed the handset from Laura. "Helicarrier, this is Agent Romanov!"

"Good to hear from you, Natasha," said the voice of Nick.

She grinned in relief. "Pleasantries later. Right now, I need a favour. I need you to get right in front of us..."

"Right in front of you?" Fury interrupted. "Natasha, you can't land an airliner on a carrier."

"I _know_. Let me finish," she said. "I need the... the thing." The word escaped her. "The thing with the lights that gives planes the angle of approach."

There was a pause. "You mean the _glide slope indicator_?" asked Fury.

"I've had a _long_ day," said Natasha. But yeah. I need you to set it up to indicate eleven degrees."

"It does three degrees," said Fury. "That's the angle to land on a carrier."

"I need eleven for a water landing," Natasha replied calmly.

"The gyros are designed to stay at three no matter what," Fury pointed out.

"I. Need. Eleven," Natasha repeated. "Why are we talking about this? I don't have time to talk."

She could hear muffled voices in the background, but not what they were saying. As they got closer to the island, Nat felt her stomach sinking... after all this work, could it really end in disaster after all? But then Fury returned.

"Chiba says he can do that," he said.

"Then get him out there!" Nat ordered.

The carrier moved slowly, directly into their path, and then rotated so they could pass over the deck as if to land. The sun was starting to set, but that wasn't a bad thing – the low light made the glide slope indicator easy to see.

"Okay, Laura," said Nat. "We're gonna have to control our angle with the throttles. You take the right, I'll take the left. Now, look down there." She pointed to the carrier in the sea ahead. "See that line of lights on the left side of the deck?"

"Yes," said Laura.

"Those tell us if we're coming in at the right angle," Natasha explained. "If they're all in a row, we're fine. If the middle one is below the level of the ones on either side, we need to speed up, so push your throttle forward. If it's above, we need to slow down, so pull it back. Make _gentle_ adjustments, and try to match mine as closely as possible."

"Got it," said Laura. "I need to send a text message." She pulled her phone out of her pocket and quickly sent a text... to Clint, probably, Natasha thought. She wondered what it said. One of those _plane going down, I love you_ texts, most likely. Laura didn't think they were going to make it.

"We'll be fine," said Natasha. "I promised you I'd get Clint back for you, remember? You haven't seen him yet, so I'm not done. I always finish what I start."

Laura put her phone away. "You've been working on that Orenburg shawl for _four years_ ," she said. "You keep starting over!"

"I'm not on a deadline for that," Natasha reminded her. "Fury," she said into the radio. "Have you got the glide slope for me?"

"The whatchamacallit is doing the thing," he replied.

"You're really funny, Grandpa," said Nat. "Here we come."

The plane wobbled like a top as the two women did their best to adjust the throttles in unison. Once or twice one of them went too far, or not far enough, and a wing dipped. No warnings went off when this happened, but people in the cabin would cry out, and Laura kept frantically apologizing. The helicarrier grew larger in the windows, at once terrifyingly fast and agonizingly slow. The altitude alarm began to blare again: _terrain ahead! Pull up! Terrain ahead! Pull up!_

As they passed over, Natasha could see Jim Chiba on the deck of the helicarrier, yelling at a group of men who were manually holding the glide slope indicator in place. Wasn't he scared? If something went wrong, the jet would come down right on top of him! It made Nat feel rather bad about calling him a coward earlier.

Laura turned on the PA system. "Okay everybody!" she shouted. "Get your seat belts on, put your heads down, and make sure you know where the emergency exits are!"

Nat smiled – Laura Barton was the type who actually listened to the safety briefing before the flight. She was probably quoting it directly.

"Brace for impact!" somebody screamed in the Business Class cabin.

"Oh, god, we're gonna hit the carrier," said Laura.

"No, we're not," Natasha told her.

"Yes, we are!"

"No, we're not! The carrier's superstructure is no more than a hundred and fifty feet above the water line. We're at five hundred feet!" Natasha insisted.

"What if a wing dips?"

"Don't let it happen!"

They passed over the carrier. There was no more help now – this was actually the most dangerous part of the landing, but Natasha smiled at Laura.

"Told you we'd make it," she said. "Now, here we go."

The ocean loomed closer and closer. It was very hard to judge scale from the waves... was that white bit a speck of rubbish, a floating gull, or a distant whale? The altimeter said one hundred feet.

Fifty feet.

Twenty. Natasha shut the engines off. They could do nothing more with them, and having them on would just mean damaging the plane worse, with risk of a fire, when they landed.

Five.

The tail entered the water first, and the drag forced the nose down. Water rushed up over the windshield. Laura screamed and ducked her head. The seat belt cut into Natasha's shoulders. For a moment it seemed as if they would go straight down. Were they doomed to end up lying on the bottom of the ocean waiting for their air to run out? Then they broke the surface again with a splash, and bobbed gently. They were floating.

Natasha breathed out. "I told you we'd make it," she said to Laura. "Aren't I always right?"

"Clint says so," said Laura. "But he also says _I'm_ always right."

"That's because he's smart enough to listen us the women," said Natasha. "Let's get the passengers off."

Laura nodded and pushed her hair back from her face. "Ladies and gentlemen," she said on the PA. "Please make your way to the nearest emergency exits. Instructions are on the cards in the pocket on the back of the seat in front of you! If you have any questions, please ask your flight attendant." She took the headset off. "When I was little I wanted to be a Stewardess," she said. "It seemed like the most glamorous job in the world... flying all over the place and serving champagne!"

"Why didn't you?" asked Natasha.

"Because I wouldn't have had any time to work on my garden," said Laura wih a smile.

Natasha nodded. "Priorities."


	11. Chapter 11: Disembarking

By the time Nat and Laura reached the cabin, the flight attendants had already opened the exits and the slides were inflating. Natasha checked on the man whose wife had tried to kill herself, but the other passengers were already helping him to get her out. The woman who'd been reading to the three children was putting scarves and hats on them.

"No need," Natasha assured her, "it's eighty degrees out."

At the bottom of the stairs, Laura hurried off to see about her own children, while Natasha moved further back to make sure the rest of the passengers were getting out all right. She was almost at the second galley area when she felt something suddenly shift under her feet, and heard startled cries. People who'd been stopping to grab backpacks and laptops suddenly started hurrying forward.

"What happened?" Nat asked, making her way aft even as panicked passengers pushed past her towards the front of the plane.

"Something broke!" a stewardess replied.

The harpoon, Natasha realized – she'd forgotten all about it. It must have torn free when they hit the water, leaving a hole in the hull of the plane. Sure enough, when she reached the floor hatch she had come up by, seawater was welling up through it, spreading across the carpet. She estimated no more than ten minutes before it filled the fuselage and sank the plane – less if the water pressure caved in the hull. Luckily, there hadn't been many people in the very back of the plane. As long as everyone had the sense to head for the front exits, they ought to be able to get out.

But as she waded into the water, Nat realized that the harpoon hole wasn't the only thing that had broken in the back of the plane. Someone who hadn't realized the back was sinking had tried to open one of the emergency doors. It hadn't opened because it was half underwater, but the slide attached to it had inflated _inside_ the passenger cabin, crushing two rows of seats – and pinning two passengers to the back wall. They were stuck there now, unable to move the inflated rubber and calling for help as the water inched up.

It was the _Hu Xian_ and one of the men who'd tried to grab Natasha – the one in the Ghostbusters shirt.

Nat's Red Room training told her that the easiest thing to do would be to leave them there. A couple of civilian casualties were acceptable side effects of a mission to a black widow. If they were people who'd gotten in her way earlier, so much the better – it meant they'd never have a chance to do it again. Nobody would know, the treacherous voice in the back of her head whispered. Everybody would assume that she either hadn't noticed them, or hadn't been able to help them. Yelena or Kamila would have turned away without a second thought.

But she wasn't Yelena Belova or Kamila Ibrayev. She was Natasha Romanov. She wasn't _a_ black widow. She was _the_ Black Widow.

There was a third person present, in the other aisle – the other Australian, the one in the Hunger Games shirt. He was pulling on the slide with all his might, but couldn't shift it. When he noticed Nat, he looked up and called out desperately.

"Help!" he said. "My brother!"

"I'm on it!" Nat climbed over the slide, which was starting to float in the water, and grabbed the nearest hand – it belonged to the _Hu Xian_. Nat pulled, and the woman struggled, but the slide was pinned between the seats and the back wall, and it wouldn't budge. Worse, it was pushing the trapped people down as the water rose, and would eventually drown them. Natasha moved over and tried to help the Australian, but he didn't even have the advantage of having an arm free. Neither could be moved. The smell of salt water was becoming overwhelming.

She thought fast. Evacuation slides were made of layers of nylon and rubber, designed to be watertight and almost impossible to puncture. A bullet would do it, but Natasha didn't have a bullet. She might, however, have something else.

"Don't leave!" the Australian begged, as Nat backed away.

"I'm coming back," she promised.

"Liar! You're leaving us to drown!" spat the _Hu Xian_.

"My name is Natasha," said Nat. "What's yours?"

"Chris," said the Australian.

"What's it matter?" the _Hu Xian_ demanded.

"It humanizes you," said Natasha calmly. "I'm not going to leave you to die if I know your name."

"Nonsense!" said the _Hu Xian_. But a moment later, she said, "Lin Meiwei."

"Chris, Meiwei, I'll be right back," Natasha promised. She hurried back up the aisle, now at a significant slope. One deep breath, then she emptied her lungs thoroughly before taking another and slipping through the hatch into the rising water.

A few flickering lights in the cargo hold had not yet shorted out underwater, and by their light Nat swam between loose pieces of luggage towards the cargo door. It was still open, and although the metal next to it had cracked and torn, the harpoon was still embedded in it. Nat reached through and managed to grab the line that was still attached to the shaft, wrapping it around her arm. She braced her feet on one of the ribs of the plane, and pulled.

Metal groaned and tore, and water started coming in faster. Air hissed out of Nat's lungs between her teeth as the line bit into her injured arm, but she kept pulling and with a jerk, the harpoon came free. Water rushed in ever faster through the crack. The current helped to push Nat back up to the hatch, but her lungs were burning by the time she got there.

She climbed out, still clutching the harpoon, and grabbed the nearest seat. Her head was spinning as she gasped for air. The water was almost waist-deep now... she didn't have much time, but she couldn't do _anything_ until she caught her breath.

"She's back!" the second Australian ran up. He didn't ask any questions, he just took the harpoon from her and splashed back down to the inflated slide. Natasha forced her stinging eyes open to watch. His brother and the _Hu Xian_ were no longer even visible, but the Australian jammed the sharp end of the harpoon into the slide as hard as he could.

Nothing happened. Nat made herself get up and wade towards him. Maybe he just needed more force.

The man jabbed at the slide again – this time, there was a hiss of escaping air, and the smell of nylon. Nat reached his side and helped him to put another hole in the other side of the slide for good measure. As the pressure eased, Chris and Meiwei came to the surface, gasping and panting.

"Come on! We have to get out!" Nat dropped the harpoon and held out her hands.

The _Hu Xian_ 's leg had been pushed against a broken seat and was bleeding. She could barely move, so the other Australian picked her up to carry. Nat and Chris supported each other as they half-climbed, half-swam towards the nearest open exit. Water was coming up through the floor now in such volume that there was a noticeable fountain effect above the hatch – and then a second hatch, further forward, also burst open to let in even more. Natasha could taste the salt in the back of her throat.

They reached the bottom of the stairs to business class. Nat pushed Chris on ahead of her,and turned to look back down the sinking fuselage. The far end was full of water to the ceiling.

"Is anybody else down here?" she called out. "Anybody?"

There was no reply, but a half-dozen horrible possibilities occurred to her. An unaccompanied child unable to escape from their seat, forgotten by the panicked adults. Somebody who was hurt and couldn't walk, but whom nobody had stopped to help. A person who'd not yet woken from the oxygen deprivation, and was now beginning to drown.

She had to be sure. She had to go back. Natasha took another deep breath and began wading back into the water, even as all her training and all her instincts together told her to go now and save herself. She ignored it. That was not what a superhero would do.

She could not, however, ignore Chris. He grabbed her and pulled her back, pushing her up the stairs ahead of him. "Nope," he said. "We have to go."

"There might be somebody still in there!" she protested.

"You can't help them now," said the other Australian. "You could barely help _us_."

On a better day Natasha would have wrapped herself around Chris' neck and thrown both men to the bottom of the staircase in a single graceful motion before running back to do her damned _job_ – but now she no longer had the strength. Going back for the harpoon had been the last gasp in her, and now her muscles had simply given up. There was nowhere to go but up the stairs, and even then, her legs were wobbling under her.

They reached the top. A flight attendant was waiting for them there. Meiwei dived through the door onto the floating slide, then the two Australians helped Natasha out before climbing out themselves. The flight attendant came last, and cut the slide loose from the plane so it could float away like a life raft.

Outside, the sunshine was bright and the wind was fresh. Nat could feel the floating slide rocking under her, with about an inch of water pooling where her body made a slight depression in it. It was over. The helicarrier would pick them up. She had saved Laura and the kids, exactly as she'd set out to do. It didn't seem quite real.

The plane dipped slightly to the left as it sank, raising one wing out of the water for a moment. Nat almost giggled to herself at the thought that it looked like it was waving goodbye. Then, without any fuss, it slipped under the gently heaving water.

* * *

Natasha may actually have passed out then, or at the very least fallen asleep, because the next thing she was aware of was lying on a stretcher on the helicarrier deck, with the sun beating down on her face. Dim human silhouettes were listening to her chest and inspecting her injured left arm, but there was another person present, too, just hovering above her. Nat blinked a few times, and then made out a familiar face.

"I told you we'd make it," she said to Laura.

Laura's anxious expression melted into a dazzling smile, and she squeezed Natasha's right hand. "Yes," she said, "yes, you did."

Still shaking, Nat sat up. Somebody handed her two Advil and a paper cup of water. Ibuprofen had never done much for her – the black widows were immune to most over-the-counter medications – but she took them anyway and drained the cup before putting it back in the hand that had offered it. She then discovered that it belonged to another person she knew.

"Thanks for rejigging the thingamabob," she said to Chiba.

He was about to say _you're welcome_ , but then he frowned. "I... you mean the _glide slope indicator_?"

"Yeah, that," Nat smiled. "Never could have made that landing without you."

"It's nice to be useful," he replied, still a little unsure.

"Make up your mind, Romanov," said Fury, as he joined the group. "Is it the thing, the whatchamacallit, or the doohickey? I gotta put out a memo about the new name tomorrow." Chiba moved aside to let him through, and he squatted down next to the stretcher, opposite from Laura. "How do you feel, Natasha?"

"Like I've just been in a plane crash," she replied, deadpan. "Was anybody still in there?" She needed to know how many had died. Needed to keep track of just _how much red_ was in her ledger.

Fury chuckled at her joke, then his face became serious. "Well, according to the manifests there were originally four hundred and one people on board. We got three hundred and ninety-four people off."

Nat tried to do the math, although it made her head hurt. "They killed the pilots and co-pilots, and four of the stewardesses were widows... with three hundred and eighty-five passengers that makes... no, that can't be right." She looked up at Fury. "There's an extra person. If everybody escaped except those eight there ought to be three hundred and ninety-three. Are you saying there was a stowaway on board?"

Laura grinned. "He's talking about _you_ , silly!"

"Oh." Nat tried not to react, but she could feel her cheeks warming. Of course – minus the four widows and the flight crew, plus Natasha, the numbers worked out. Everybody had gotten off okay. "Right. Sorry, like I said, I..."

"You've had a long day," Fury nodded.

Once the medics were sure Nat wasn't going to expire at their feet, they started to lift the stretcher – but Nat wasn't going to stand for that. She used Fury's arm as support to pull herself to her feet, and let him help her towards the helicarrier's superstructure.

"What did you do with the _Hu Xian_?" she asked. "The woman who got off with me and the two Australians?"

"Not sure," said Fury, as they made their very slow way across the deck. "I'll check for you. Good job, by the way," he added.

"Thanks, Dad," she replied with _just_ a hint of sarcasm. Natasha knew very well that she'd done a good job – she didn't need Fury to tell it to her. "Does that mean I'm not grounded?"

"Oh, no, you're still grounded," said Fury. "But I'll tell the boys they won't be needed today."

Nat looked sideways at him, with a sudden awful feeling. Had he really not trusted her to get this done? Had he brought a squad of agents... or even the Avengers? "Which boys are we talking about?"

" _Daddy_!" a voice shrieked.

Nat turned her head. It was Lila Barton who had shouted, and now Natasha saw both her and Cooper running to meet their father, who dropped to his knees on the helicarrier deck and held out his arms for them. Rather than wearing street clothes or any kind of SHIELD uniform, he was dressed in a dark blue coverall to match the accident investigation team who were dealing with the plane wreck, but any attempt at being undercover had apparently gone out the window when he'd seen his children. He gathered them up, pretending they'd almost knocked him over. Maybe they had – his ribs couldn't be quite healed yet.

"Ooof!" he said. "Let your old Dad breathe a little, would you?"

Laura joined them, and Clint hugged her, too, and kissed the top of her head. Watching them, Natasha had to smile – the black widows had been raised so that they had nothing to lose, but she'd always thought that the reason Clint Barton had been able to best her was because he had _everything_ to lose. No matter what he was doing, in the back of his head there was always his home and his family. Those were more important than any mission, and they were the thing Natasha herself could never, ever have.

She looked back at Fury. "Any more?"

"Just one," said Fury. "Stark's busy as always, Thor's dealing with family, and we're trying to get Rogers to think about something _other_ than saving the world – but Dr. Banner volunteered his services so I figured we might as well bring him along."

He pressed the button to the elevator and the doors opened – and sure enough, there was Bruce Banner, in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans. Nat paused in her steps a little on instinct. As always, Banner looked so harmless... but she'd seen for herself what was inside of him.

Banner's eyes went wide when he saw her. "You're soaked!" he exclaimed, and unzipped his sweatshirt – underneath it he was wearing a _Mystery Science Theater 3000_ shirt that was almost certainly Stark's. "Didn't anybody think to give you dry clothes?" Banner asked, draping the hoodie around her shoulders.

This time, Natasha really did laugh. It was such a _gentlemanly_ gesture, one she'd been offered before but rarely by anybody who wasn't hoping for something in return, and the fact that it was coming from Bruce Banner of all people just made it funnier. "Thanks," she said, pulling it close around herself. It smelled like him – sweat and cheap detergent and just a _slight_ hint of marijuana.

"Uh-oh," said Clint, slipping into the elevator to join them. "You're not getting that back, Banner," he said. "But welcome to the club."

"Club?" asked Banner.

"The club of people Natasha's stolen sweatshirts from," said Clint. "She's got a couple of mine and I _know_ she has one of Stark's."

"One of mine, too, if I'm not mistaken," said Fury.

"So yeah, we're the club," Clint nodded. "I'd say we have jackets, but Natasha would steal them.

Nat put her arms into the sleeves of the hoodie. "Mine now," she agreed, and let her eyes close as the elevator took her down.

* * *

In sick bay the medics stitched up and bandaged her arm, and then she was wheeled into a private area behind a curtain where she could sleep. She didn't know how long she was out, but when she woke up, there was a tray of food by the bedside, with steam still rising from it. Her automatic reaction, the one drummed into her by years of training, would have been to leave it alone despite the loud, gurgling protestations of her stomach. Any food offered by strangers was likely to be drugged or poisoned. But Nat reminded herself that she wasn't _among_ strangers here – Fury was her friend, and would not let anything happen to her. She pulled the tray closer, and dug into a warm chicken pot pie.

The curtain moved back a little. Nat would have expected Fury or Clint, but instead it was Banner who stepped inside. "You're awake," he said. "You look like you've been through hell."

"Why, thank you," said Nat, mouth full. "You're a real charmer, do you know that?" Why was _he_ here, she wondered. What did _he_ want?

Banner started to sit down beside the bed, then stood up again, wary of her suspicious expression. "Sorry. If you don't want me here..."

"No, it's fine," she said, waving her hand, fork and all, to reassure him. After all she'd been through already, the Hulk seemed like a relatively minor concern. "I don't mind having some company. Where's Clint?"

"With a friend," Banner replied at once. The vagueness in his voice was very deliberate.

"Oh?" asked Nat. Banner didn't seem like somebody Clint would trust with a secret like the existence of Laura and the kids – but then, neither did Natasha herself, from an objective perspective.

"Fury made it very clear to me that I never saw the friend in question," Banner said. "So if I'm ever _officially_ told I'll have to act surprised. It won't be hard. It _was_ kind of a shock, actually, because I thought you two were..." he shrugged.

"No, we're good friends. That's all," said Nat. She _was_ still a little bit in love with Clint and probably always would be – but that was her problem, not his. "He's gonna be glad to get home. What about you?" she asked. It hadn't escaped her notice that he'd volunteered for a potential rescue mission that would take him to the other side of the world, giving him the option to vanish all over again. Fury would definitely have noticed, too.

"I'm not sure," Banner replied, and finally pulled the chair back up to sit down again. "Tony offered some thoughts on my gamma work so maybe I'll head back and see if that goes anywhere... but that would be in New York, and I wasn't such a big fan of New York even _before_ the aliens."

Nat nodded. Banner was good at bottling things up, but she could read him – he really _wanted_ to believe that things could get better for him, but he felt desperately helpless and was terrified of hurting people, of becoming the monster his enemies thought he was. Bruce Banner was a natural optimist who'd been disappointed so many times it had almost killed the last spark of hope in him... but not quite.

"What about you?" he asked. "You, uh, got any plans?"

"I'm gonna take a vacation," Nat replied. Fury would probably insist on it. "After babysitting Stark, and then New York, and now this, I need one."

"Do you?" asked Banner. "Or is it the fact that we were all on TV and you need to lie low for a while?"

Nat hadn't expected him to be so forthright. She studied his face for a moment, and realized he was studying hers in return... of _course_ , he knew how hiding worked, didn't he? He was a master at it, able to cross borders or obtain fake ID without leaving a ripple, and when he asked her that question, he was talking about himself. His face, too, had been all over the news, and the people he'd been hiding from now knew exactly who and where he was. The trap laid for Natasha had shown him what could happen to _himself_.

Now she understood – he'd come to the Philippines with Fury to secure himself a chance of escape, and he'd come to sick bay to talk to Natasha because he wanted to talk to somebody who would understand his particular problem. He wanted advice.

"Some of that, too," she said quietly. "Nobody wants to hire a spy when everybody knows what she looks like... I probably wont' be doing too much until things quiet down a little." If this escapade made it to the media, that would take even longer. "I'm sure if you want to stay with Stark, he'll protect you."

"He'll try," said Banner. "Not sure Miss Potts would want me around, though."

"Oh, Pepper will be fine," Natasha assured him. "She's not afraid of anything, at least not once she'd gotten to know you."

"I'm not the easiest guy to get to know," Banner pointed out.

"She likes a challenge," said Nat, and smiled. "So do I."

The Hulk was frightening, Natasha thought – but Bruce Banner was not. If she could keep a handle on the monster inside _her_ , he could surely do the same.

* * *

The helicarrier put in at Laoag, and offloaded the passengers of Flight 113. Those who needed it were taken to the local hospital. Others were found hotels, or put on boats, trains, or other airplanes to get them back on their way. The Barton family were put up in the beautiful glass-fronted Rivermount Resort, where Natasha went to join them for a late supper. Dressed in street clothes, with her arm in a sling, she was already looking and feeling better. The black widows were quick healers. They'd been made to be.

Fury accompanied her to the hotel lobby. "Did you find the _Hu Xian_?" Natasha asked him again. "Where is she?"

"Relax," said Fury. "She's in the brig – she's back to insisting that she doesn't speak English."

Natasha relaxed a little. The widows were all dead or had gotten away. She wanted _somebody_ arrested as a result of this debacle. "What are you going to do with her?"

"We're not sure," said Fury. "If we can talk to her I might try to convince her she's got a second chance at SHIELD. It's worked before."

"Maybe I'll have a go at her," Nat said. "I did save her life, after all. Let me know how it goes." She squeezed Fury's arm and kissed his cheek, and then went to get the elevator up. They'd put the Bartons in a nice suite on the top floor. Nat knocked on the door, and it was Lila who opened it and wrapped her arms around Natasha's waist in a hug.

"Did you ride the elephant, Auntie Nat?" she asked.

"I'm sorry, I didn't have time," said Nat, kneeling to hug her back. "I was very busy in India and I couldn't stay there very long. Next time I go someplace with elephants, I'll definitely ride one for you, okay?"

"Okay," said Lila. She took Nat's hand to lead her to the dinner table. "We got you something from Australia!" she added.

"Yeah!" Cooper slid down from his chair and grabbed his backpack off the sofa.

"Weren't you supposed to leave all your stuff on the plane?" asked Natasha. Other people had been grabbing their things as they disembarked, but the safety briefings always told people to leave their luggage, and she couldn't imagine Laura letting them stop.

"It was _right there_ ," said Cooper. "And we couldn't leave your present." He unzipped the bag and pulled out a little box, wrapped in paper with a pattern of tropical birds. Natasha smiled as she accepted it and pulled the ribbon off. Inside was a slim cardboard box, and when she opened it she found, resting on a bed of cotton, a silver necklace with an arrow pendant.

"We thought you'd like it," said Lila, "because Dad uses arrows."

"I do like it." Natasha took it out and put it on, then gave each child a hug. "Thank you very much!"

"Thank _you_ , Natasha," said Clint.

She looked up at him and smiled. "I promised Laura she'd see you again. Couldn't break that promise."

"No, I mean it." Now it was Clint's turn to hug her. "Thank you," he said quietly. "I... I don't know how I'm ever gonna thank you."

"It was nothing," she said, and held the embrace a moment longer before letting go. Clint didn't need to thank her, because she'd only just begun thanking _him_ – but he wouldn't believe that if she told it to him. "Out of curiosity... what did the text from Laura say? The one she sent before we landed?" Nat had assumed it was a goodbye, but she was curious.

Clint smiled. "It said, _landing now. Natasha's got us_."

Natasha blinked and looked at Laura, who nodded softly. Natasha's smile broadened into a grin, and she blinked quickly to get the tears out of her eyes. For all her wide-eyed worry, Laura had never doubted her for a moment.


	12. Chapter 12: Made of Marble

Nat treated herself that night – she got a room in the hotel and spread herself out over the giant double bed, enjoying the space. Natasha Romanov had slept under ledges of stone in the Black Forest, on filthy little cots in the type of hotel room people rented by the hour, and on the floors of jail cells infested with rats and cockroaches. A real bed, and a big one, was still kind of an unthinkable luxury.

Even after all these years, though, a bed she wasn't handcuffed to still didn't feel like one Nat was _supposed_ to be in. It was always a bed she was _borrowing_ , never one she _belonged_ in... it was a bed in a place to which she had no anchor. A bed with no handcuff was one she might have to run away from at a moment's notice.

There was another unpleasant association, too – the only time the girls in the Red Room had been in big beds, with no handcuffs, was when they were suffering too badly to be put anywhere else. On the nights when they'd gotten their _medicine_.

The treatments had started when the girls were about seven, and each began with a thorough physical to make sure they were strong enough. Natasha remembered it far too clearly, seated on the end of a table having her blood pressure, white cell counts, and reflexes checked. At the other end had been Triinu Kaasik, silently sitting through the same tests. At the next table over was a girl named Sevana Kanantchian, originally from Armenia. She passed the physical, and was told to go ahead to the next room. Her partner on the second table, Ksenia Gretzky from Minsk, was rejected. She left the room in a hurry, clutching her clothes to her chest, and Natalia decided that like others before her, she was unlikely to ever be seen again.

She was right.

The doctor listened to Natalia's chest, and nodded. "You are very healthy, Miss Romanova," he said. "You can go ahead."

Natalia got up and followed Sevana into the next room.

This was similar to the one she'd just left, with a row of metal tables down each side, cracked tiles on the floor, and fluorescent tubes in the ceiling. The lights shed a slightly greenish glow that made Natalia want to squint. Each of the tables here, however, had a big box of a machine behind it, and racks of coiled tubes – and each table had metal cuffs waiting for a girl just her size to climb into them.

A doctor escorted Natalia to a table and told her to undress and lie down. She obeyed, because she knew what happened to the girls who didn't, and they locked the restraints around her wrists, her ankles, and her neck. The metal was icy-cold against her skin, and gave her goosebumps. One by one, more girls entered, and the tables filled. Nobody had told them what was going to happen here today. The doctors had only said that they were healthy enough.

Finally, with only two empty tables left in the room, the doctors stood up respectfully as Madame walked in. She headed to the front and stood up straight, which made all the girls pay especial attention. Madame looked as if she were about to say something of particular importance, and they knew they would be punished if they failed to take it in.

"Good morning, girls," she said. "You're here today because you all show excellent promise as good servants of the state. Today, therefore, we will be giving you some medicine to help you grow big and strong. Right now you're merely flesh and bone, but someday..." she smiled. "Someday you will be made of marble."

On the table next to her was a brick – a fat, rough, red one like in the walls of the State Home for Girls in Volgograd. Madame picked it up, held it at both hands, and snapped it in half like somebody might do with a soup cracker.

"It may sting a little," she said, "but you are strong girls. I know you can handle it. The state loves you, and will not allow you to come to any harm." Madame looked at the row of doctors. "You may begin."

One or two of the people in the white coats – now that she thought of it, nobody had told Natalia if they were doctors or scientists – looked hesitant, but that vanished when they saw Madame's cold face. Nobody wanted to make Madame angry, not even the grownups.

A man inserted a needle into Natalia's right arm, and then another into the left. He was good at it – she felt barely a pinch. A catheter went into the vein in one and the artery in the other, and the machine at the head of the table began to hum. Natalia couldn't see what it was doing, because it was behind her, but she could see her blood creeping, thick and cherry-red, into the right-hand tube. Would they drain her dry, she wondered, like vampires? Maybe that was why Madame looked the way she did. Maybe she was a _Morana_.

After a minute or so, blood began coming back down the tube on the left, but it looked different now – paler, perhaps, with an odd sheen to it like the surface of a pearl. What would that feel like when it entered her veins again?

She soon had her answer. It felt like fire. It felt as if there were hot lava running into her body, as if every nerve were tying itself in knots and every muscle trying to pull the wrong way. Natalia had been in some terrible pain since coming to the Red Room, but none of it had ever been like this. She opened her mouth to scream.

But then she snapped it shut again. Madame had told the girls they could handle it. Screaming would be a sign of weakness, and the weak were weeded out. The doctor had said that Natalia was very healthy. None of the other girls were screaming, so Natalia couldn't do so, either. She must endure it. She must be a good servant of the state.

She had no idea how long she lay there, suffering. It may have been only a few seconds. It may have been days.

Sevana Kanantchian was on the table across from Natalia. She appeared to be straining against the metal cuffs – her back was arched, her hands balled into fists, her toes curled. Natalia watched her, hoping to distract herself from her own agony, and saw blood well up from the other girl's palms as her fingernails dug into her own flesh. The twisting of Sevana's body became more and more extreme and then, suddenly, she began to scream.

Natalia had felt that _she_ had to scream sooner or later, and hearing it from Sevana was almost a relief, as if the other girl's cries could let out Natalia's own pain as well. But once it had started, it did not stop, even for breath. Sevana screamed on the inhale as well as the exhale, with only the pitch changing, and it just went on and on and on. The cuff holding her left wrist snapped, and Natalia had a horrible premonition that Sevana was about to get up off the table and do... Natalia had no idea what she would do, but it would certainly be awful.

Then as suddenly as it had begun, the screaming stopped. Sevana's naked body dropped back against the metal with a sound flesh should not make, like a frying pan dropped on a tile floor, and she was silent.

Doctors gathered around her. One tried CPR while others tore the catheter out of her right arm and pumped the rest of her blood back into the left. Nothing worked. When they finally gave up, a few minutes later, the body they left behind on the table was chalk-white. Whiter even than the porcelain skin of Madame.

A moment after that, a second girl further up the room began to scream, too.

Over the course of the next hour, four of them died, each in the same way. Natalia concluded that all of them would end up like Sevana, that whatever medicine they were being given had not been tested properly and would poison them all. But she made no effort to escape, or to tear the catheters out. Madame had said this would serve the state, and so it must be done.

The rest of them did not die, though. Instead, after an eternity of torment the catheters were carefully removed, and the restraints unlocked. Natalia tried to sit up, but her body refused to respond. She tried again, and once more nothing happened – it was as if she were trapped in a shell of stone. That was no good – she _had_ to get up. She was the one who kept going, no matter one. Finally, with incredible effort she pushed herself into a sitting position. Her head spun, her lungs burned, and every cell in her body screamed at her to stop, but she made it.

The doctors around her stared. "Miss Romanov," one of them began, reaching to put a hand on her shoulder, "you really mustn't..."

His touch was like a thousand-ton weight, burning white-hot. The only thing Natalia could think to do about it was to hurl him across the room – and she did, though it left her hands stinging and every join that had to move blazed with pain. That was too much for her. She collapsed again, and fell off the table into a heap on the tile floor. It felt like she'd fallen for miles, with and elephant dropped on top of her. Yellow spots danced in front of her eyes, and then everything went black.

A moment later the world faded back in, but only barely. It was just enough for her to see a bleary vision of people in white, gathered around a shape on the floor. For a moment she wondered why it wouldn't focus – then she realized she was seeing a reflection in the side of a metal cabinet. The doctors in their white coats were looking at a girl of around seven, naked on the floor. Her skin was snow-white, like Madame's, and her hair pale ginger. Was that Natalia? She didn't look like herself at all.

Then at last she dropped into merciful unconsciousness.

Natalia didn't know how long she slept, but it was fitful and unpleasant. At times she was almost awake, and then the mattress she was lying on felt like millions of fire ants all biting her at once like they had in the woods near Tbilisi. The tiniest bits of light were migraines unto themselves. Sleeping, however, was worse, as she relived the pain of the table and the doctor's touch over and over again.

Suddenly she sat up in the dark, clutching the covers so hard she heard the sound of them tearing, and sat there panting for breath as tears slid down her cheeks. She could smell the hot water in the darkness, smell her own sweat and the detergent in the sheets and the disinfectant that had been used to clean the floors and walls. Her tears felt burning hot, so she reached up and wiped them away, wincing in expectation of more pain.

It did hurt a bit – her skin felt incredibly soft and very sensitive, like a mass of bruises, and her muscles were sore as if she'd run for miles the previous day. She was no longer on fire, though. Merely moving was no longer unbearable. What did she _look_ like now?

A bit wobbly, she got out of bed. The tile was ice on her bare feet – _painful_ ice. The tutors had made the girls read fairy tales to keep them in practice on foreign languages, and there'd been a Danish one about a mermaid. The mermaid had convinced a sorceress to give her human legs, but every step she'd taken had been like walking on knives. Had it felt like this?

The light came on.

Natalia quickly covered her eyes as the illumination stabbed into them, bringing up more tears. People surrounded her on all sides, which helped by dimming it a little, but then they frog-marched her down the hallway and back into the medical room where she'd received her examination before the medicine. Were they going to give her more? Natalia knew she couldn't handle that. Once had almost killed her. Twice definitely would.

They didn't, though. Instead, they sat her down on the table and examined her, looking into her eyes with a bright light that felt like needles, listening to her heart and lungs with an icy stethoscope, testing her reflexes and taking her blood pressure, all while Madame watched.

Natalia sat and waited, staring down at her hands in her lap. They looked their usual colour... or did they? It was hard to tell. The light in the room was painfully bright... but her skin didn't seem to _reflect_ it the way Madame's did. She reached up and tugged at one of her braids, pretending to play with it nervously. When she glanced at it, it seemed like its original dark red colour. Maybe whatever they'd given her hadn't worked properly. That probably meant she would be discarded, like Ksenia or the twins from Chernobyl, but that was almost a relief.

Madame didn't seem quite human. Whatever she was, Natalia didn't want to become it.

"She's doing very well, considering the shock to her system," one of the doctors said. "In fact, I'd say she's one of the strongest of the lot."

Madame nodded. "And to think, that dried-up old cow in Volgograd said she'd be too sensitive!"

It was another week after that before they were allowed to do anything physical – then, however, the girls were back at their daily exercises. When they were ushered out to the yard for the day's obstacle course, it looked to Natalia as if it would be far more difficult than anything they'd faced before. Walls had been made higher, bridges narrower, drops longer, weights heavier. Natalia gritted her teeth and watched the others' reactions – they, too, were all trying to prepare, thinking they would fail.

Madame, however, was not worried. She nodded, and tent them off as if she fully expected them to excel. Of course she did – they were her good daughters of the state. To fail was simply not permitted.

And they did not fail. It wasn't a huge different, but Natalia soon realized that she could push herself that tiny bit harder, run that little bit faster, lift that few kilograms more. The stuff in the tubes had done _something_ , but it hadn't done very _much_. She would not be breaking bricks with her bare hands as Madame had done, and in a way that was the scariest thing of all. It meant they would have to take that medicine again someday.

They did. Every year on the same day, and it never got any easier. In fact, as time went on Natalia thought that each dose was actually _worse_ than the last, perhaps because each was successively larger. But after that first terrible day nobody screamed and died again, and every year Madame assured them that they were strong and healthy, and they could take it. It was what would make them worthy of their exalted position as protectors of the state.

Someday they, like she, would be made of marble.

* * *

Natasha woke curled into a ball with a pillow clutched against her face and tears in her eyes. Even in her sleep, she was worried about what would happen if somebody saw her weakness. She'd always _hated_ the medicine, hated the way it burned and how it made everything painful for the next couple of days until her body adapted. And what she'd hated most of all was the idea that she would someday become a statue like Madame, a horrible effigy of a human being. When she'd run away, it had been as much to escape _that_ nasty fate as it had been for anything else.

She wondered how many others there were. Of all the black widows who'd ever lived... how many had lasted long enough to become whatever Madame was? Or was she the only one who'd made it that far?

Nat wiped her eyes on her sleeve and got up. Her bare feet made no noise on the floor as she crossed to the bathroom. There was no way she was going to be able to sleep any more for a while, not with her heart pounding and her hands shaking like this. She would wash her face, and then maybe head down to the lobby and have a drink. Something to clear her head before she tried sleeping again.

The lights came on with a click as the motion sensor picked up her entrance, and she glanced in the mirror, wincing in expectation of what she would see – but it was only her. Her hair was rumpled from sleep, and she was dressed in pajama pants, a camisole, and Banner's purple hoodie. With a relieved sigh, Nat turned on the tap. The hotel's soap smelled nice. The wrapper said it was orange mango.

Then she heard the second click, and when she looked up again, there was a gun to her head.

Yelena stepped out from behind the shower curtain, and Nat just stared at her. She smelled of the orange mango soap... she must have washed herself with it, so she would blend in with the scents of the hotel bathroom. And doing so much have been incredibly painful, because after Nat had forced her into the steam escaping from the carrier's catapult, she had no more than two thirds of a face. Half her scalp, her forehead and her nose were a mass of red blisters with the skin peeling in tatters. The lens in that eye had been cooked white, and her hair was falling away as the dead skin sloughed.

She _should_ clearly have been in a hospital, and yet here she was, on her feet and hiding in a hotel bathroom. It would have been deeply impressive if Nat hadn't been about to die.

Then again, she didn't _need_ to be about to die. This was Yelena after all – and Yelena was, and had always been, a gloater.

"The shower?" asked Nat. "Seriously?"

"What better place?" asked Yelena with a smirk – her lips were still intact. "It's the one thing even _you_ can't escape from. You like to hang out with gods and monsters, Natalia. You think you're a superhero, but at the end of the day, you shit sitting down just like the rest of us."

"You should have been a poet," sneered Nat. Get her hackles up. _Keep her talking_. Yelena liked to have the last word. "What's next for you after you've killed me? An all-lesbian version of _Phantom of the Opera_?"

"I was thinking plastic surgery," Yelena said lightly. "I've never liked my nose anyway."

"Noses are over-rated," Nat agreed. Now that Yelena came closer, Nat could faintly smell cooked meat. It wouldn't have bothered her normally, but knowing it was human flesh turned her stomach. The orphanage had probably smelled like that when they got the fire put out. "I'm surprised Madame didn't just shoot you for letting me escape."

"It didn't _let_ you!" snapped Yelena. "Kamila and Eglė _let_ you. You want to know what happened to them?" Her lips curled into a snarl. "Madame killed Eglė. She told her she was _useless_. Eglė is dead and it's your fault."

She was trying to play on Nat's guilt – an emotion she knew Natasha had and she did not. "I didn't force her to help me," Natasha replied. She'd told Eglė, _you didn't save me, you covered your ass_. Eglė had, perhaps, let her pass because she wanted to make that up to her – or maybe just because she wanted Natasha to owe her a favour. Natasha hadn't killed her, but she'd set in motion the chain of events that led to her death. "You like blaming things on other people, don't you, Yelena?"

 _That_ got to her. Yelena bristled. "You're the one who told him we were spies, and then shot him!"

"Oh, I beg your pardon for saving your life," Natasha shot back. "He'd already figured it out – _he_ would have killed _us_. I salvaged the situation and you tried to throw me under the bus. You've always been a tattle-tale. If we're talking about who we've killed, _you_ killed Irina and Ilona. Did you know them when you lived in Pripyat, Yelena?" she taunted. "Did you grow up together, and then you killed them?"

"They killed _themselves_ when they tried to run away!" Yelena said. "And you know what? If our positions had been reversed, I'd have let him kill you. I've always been sorry I didn't shoot you on the way back to headquarters that day! We're not allies, Natalia. We're not _friends_. You never figured that out, did you?"

"We aren't allies because they taught us not to be," said Nat. "They didn't want us to ever realize what we could accomplish if we turned on them. For somebody who likes to be in charge of a situation, you really are putty in Madame's hands, Yelena." As hero-villain dialogue went, that was pretty cliché – but Natasha thought maybe she could mix this up a little. After all, in Yelena's mind _she_ was the bad guy here, and what was it bad guys always said to heroes? "Why don't you just walk away. Or better yet, the two of us together could kill her. We were her two favourites," Natasha reminded her. "Think of what we could accomplish together."

What would she do if Yelena said yes? Nat realized she had no idea. She was making this up as she went along.

"As if you're any different!" Yelena said. "You just chose a different master!" She was really angry now. She was hiding it well, but Natasha could see the tells. Her hand on the gun was trembling slightly with suppressed rage, and that was all Natasha needed. She knocked the gun out of Yelena's hand and pushed her back against the shower curtain, meaning to tie her up in it.

Yelena reacted – she grabbed the curtain as she fell, yanking it off the rings and twisting it in her hands so that by the time she was done, she'd made a rope out of it. Nat seized it to pull it out of her hands, but Yelena swung herself up on Natasha's shoulders and wrapped it around her neck to choke her. Nat managed to get her hands under it and used it as a sling to throw Yelena against the mirror, which shattered in a shower of silvered glass.

It was all training. It was all instinct, pounded into both girls from early childhood, drawing on the strength and resilience the medicine had pumped into their veins. That was why it wasn't going to go anywhere, Natasha realized, as Yelena came at her using one of the pieces of glass as a shiv. They were too much alike. They could predict each other's every move. Any fight between two black widows would always end in a stalemate.

Nat couldn't do this as a black widow, but what else could she do? _What else was she?_

Yelena was trying to get past her. She wanted to move the fight out into the suite, where there'd be more room. That would be helpful for Natasha as well, but not enough so to offset the problems Yelena could cause her there. She dragged the other woman back, throwing her into the bathtub, but Yelena wrapped her legs around Natasha's neck and flipped over her. She grabbed Nat's hair, and began slamming her face against the tiled wall.

What else _was_ Natasha, really? Even when she'd gone to work for SHIELD – for the _good guys_ – Nat had been valuable for what the Red Room had taught her. She knew secrets. She knew technology, knew weaponry, knew how to fight. She knew how to be anybody and blend in anywhere. When she'd been on her own, taking work where she could find it, she'd used the same skills for her employers, and to avoid capture by Interpol or by the Red Room itself. Natasha Romanov had never been a _who_. She'd always been a _what_ , and _what_ she was, was a black widow.

She jerked her head to the side, pulling out some of her own hair but freeing herself from Yelena's grip. An arm around Yelena's neck, and she slammed the other woman's head against the faucet. It broke off, and cold water came spraying out.

Natasha grabbed a towel to press against her bleeding nose. What should she do now?

What should she _not_ do now? What would a black widow do in this situation? A black widow who knew she was beaten would cut her losses, destroy the evidence, and retreat. That was what she'd done when she'd visited Volgograd. That was what she'd _tried_ to do in Budapest, but Clint had cut her off. If she tried it now, Yelena would follow her.

 _Good_.

She opened the bathroom window and kicked it hard, forcing both the pane and the screen out to create an escape route. Yelena picked herself up and grabbed Nat's ankle, trying to hold her back, So Nat grabbed her by her ear and forced her face into the water spray. It must have been hideously painful on her already burned skin, because Yelena actually cried out. Nat wiggled out the window and swung herself sideways to catch her legs on the railing of the balcony next door. That was exactly where Yelena would expect her to go.

But Yelena, imagining that Nat was trying to run away, would _not_ expect her to immediately swing _back_ and grab her as she followed her out. They grappled in midair for a moment, and then Nat threw her opponent into the swimming pool thirty feet below.

She pulled herself back up onto the balcony and tried to catch her breath. This was somebody else's room, but Nat didn't care – she staggered into the washroom and cleaned the blood off her face and hands. Her nose was still bleeding a little, so she grabbed a bag of ice from the machine to put on it. The thing to do now was call Fury.

One of the people sleeping in the room had left a cell phone charging on a desk. She picked it up and swiped the screen. Luckily there was no password on it – she could have gotten in anyway, but it would have slowed her down. The text in the phone's OS was all in Thai, but Nat could read just enough of that to find her way around. She dialed Fury's number.

It occurred to her that she _could_ call Clint. He was actually _in_ the hotel and would not hesitate to come to her aid, but he and his family had been through enough today. Natasha wouldn't be the one who put them in more danger. The widows had given the impression that they didn't know or care who she'd been communicating with, as long as it was somebody she might show up to save. Nat wouldn't be the one who emphasized the Barton family's importance to her.

The phone rang three times, and a sleepy voice said, "this has to be Romanov. Nobody else calls me from other people's numbers in the middle of the night."

"I just threw a woman with half a face into the swimming pool," said Natasha.

"Yeah, that's Romanov all right," Fury grumbled, but she could hear cloth moving, and he already sounded more awake. "Where are you?"

"In somebody's room." Nat unlocked the door and peeked out. "There's nobody in the hallway. Where are you?"

"On board the _Vanguard_ ," replied Fury. "I'll meet you in the hotel lobby. You need to be _seen_ leaving the building." He understood what she wanted – to draw the attention of any additional Red Room agents _away_ from the hotel. If there were any chance of a shootout, she didn't want civilians hurt.

"I'm on my way," Natasha promised. She plugged the phone back in and slipped out.

Elevators were an enclosed space, and too easy to sabotage. Nat took the stairs, flying down two flights – her sleep, uneasy as it had been, had sped up her already accelerated healing. When she reached the bottom she crossed the big lobby, with its high widows and polished wooden floors, with a straight back and long strides, like a woman on a mission. Very few other people were awake at this hour, but one of those who _were_ was Dr. Banner. He was seated by himself at the bar, drinking a glass of soda water.

Nat hesitated a moment, then decided she _had_ to. He would know where the _Vanguard_ was moored, and she could hardly ask for a better bodyguard. "Hey, Doc!" she called out, as if this were a friendly social meeting.

He turned around and looked at her, startled, taking in her askew clothing, wet hair, and bruised face. "What happened to you?"

"I had a little trouble with the shower," said Natasha, as if it were nothing. "Listen." She ame closer. " need a favour."

The design of the hotel lobby was open and curved, with wooden walls in slightly odd places to provide focus points for artwork and furniture as well as disguising the columns that supported the upper storeys. It was as Natasha passed one of these hidden pillars that a woman dressed as a staff member suddenly stepped into her path.

It was not a staff member. It was Madame.

Without any hesitation, she looped her arm through Nat's and began leading her out of the building. Her grip was as firm as steel, her flesh cool and hard. People had, sometimes, likened Madame's touch to that of a statue, but Natasha had always thought of her more like the body of a snake. No warmer than the air, solid but supple, alive and strong and coiled to strike.

"Listen to me," said Madame firmly. "Since you care so _deeply_ about irrelevant people: Yelena and I have spent the evening planting six bombs in this hotel. If you don't come with me now, we will detonate them. The building will burn with guests and staff trapped inside – the stairs will collapse and people on the upper floors will not be able to escape. If you want to save them, you will say goodbye to your friend and do as I say."

Natasha looked over at Dr. Banner. Did Madame know who he was? He'd gotten to his feet, but the expression on his face was one of helplessness. He knew he couldn't help Nat in here, not without destroying the place himself. His hands were tied.

"Say goodbye to Fury for me," Natasha said.

"I will," Banner promised.

Madame dragged Natasha outside. "We can detonate the bombs remotely at any time," she went on. "The local fire department is quite preoccupied with a gas station on fire at the other end of their jurisdiction. They won't make it here in time. The bombs are unlikely to be found until housekeeping makes their rounds in the morning. I can kill everyone in that hotel with a word, at any time between now and then.

Nat thought fast. If that were really the case... then she had to get back inside. Madame didn't want Natasha dead because if she did, she'd already had plenty of opportunities. Yelena had most likely been _ordered_ not to shoot her – she'd been going to do it anyway, and would have come up with a story about how Nat had left her no choice. She wouldn't blow up the hotel if Nat were still in there. For a few steps, she accompanied Madame as if willing, but when they were no more than a dozen feet from the doors she performed a twist maneuver to pull her arm free.

It didn't work. Nat's shoulder wrenched, and she gasped in pain as Madame simply did not let go. Uncounted years of taking the medicine had rendered her entirely immune to such moves, and she knew it.

"Don't insult me," said Madame, dragging Nat along. "Do you really think I don't know your every move? I'm the one who _taught_ it to you!"

Outside, Yelena came jogging up, soaking wet. "Madame!" she called out. "You found..."

Madame reached out and grabbed her by the throat. Nat saw Yelena's eyes widen in terror.

"I thought your hate would make you useful," Madame said. "I was wrong." She lifted Yelena off her feet, and quite casually threw her through the nearest window. The woman's body went sailing through in a shower of safety glass, and Madame turned away again and pushed Nat towards a car.

"It's time," she said, "for our lost baby bird to come home. The nest is waiting."


	13. Chapter 13: Deadly Cargo

There was an armoured truck waiting outside. It looked like it might have been there to make a delivery – the guards standing around the open doors, rifles in their hands, were simply there to protect the precious cargo. After a brief look around to make sure nobody was watching, Madame escorted Natasha into the back. This time there were would be no breakable handcuffs or cell doors with locks that could be picked. Natasha, in her pajamas, was put in titanium shackles and attached to a ring in the floor. The chains were not long enough to let her stand up.

Nor could she reach the bench across the front end of the compartment. Madame seated herself on that and took off her hotel maid's hat, placing it delicately next to her. Natasha would have to sit on the floor, so she did. There was a nasty metallic smell, like a handful of pennies.

The door closed. From the sound of it there were several locks. The engine started, and the truck drove away.

"Where are we going?" asked Nat. Her throat was so dry she had to swallow twice before she could make the words come out. Her heartbeat was irregular. Her blood was loud in her ears.

"St. Petersburg," said Madame.

"Where are we stopping between now and St. Petersburg?" Nat tried.

"That's irrelevant," Madame replied, voice clipped. "You will not be leaving this cell or my sight until we get there. If nobody else can control you, then I will do it myself."

They wanted her back very, very badly, Natasha thought. Something vitally important was riding on this. Maybe if she could find out what it was, that would give her an advantage. "What happens in St. Petersburg?"

"Why should I tell you?" Madame asked. "You won't remember this conversation anyway."

That was an answer itself: she would be _re-educated_ , as they said. Brainwashed and tormented until she would never dare to disobey them again. That hadn't worked on Nat the first time, and she doubted it would work now... but it was still something she'd much rather not go through again. If nothing else, SHIELD would have to waste time and resources trying to rescue her.

"SHIELD will come for me," she said, testing for a response.

"Is that what you've come to?" Madame demanded, and Nat flinched in expectation of being struck. Madame, however, didn't even stand up. "Waiting for somebody to _rescue_ you? That's an insult to the Red Room – you _ought_ to rely on nobody but yourself!" She glared coldly down at the girl sitting at her feet, and Nat had to lower her eyes as she remembered a dozen incidents from her childhood, when she'd seen somebody _else_ at the receiving end of that stare. Whoever earned Madame's disapproval had usually vanished within a few days, and had never been seen again. Now, at long last, it was Natasha's turn. The thought turned her knees to jelly. She couldn't have stood if she'd tried.

"And no," Madame added, "they _won't_ come for you. Director Fury," she sniffed disdainfully as she spoke the name, "will be much too busy dealing with the escape of our friend from China. We can offer Miss Lin things SHIELD never could... and she can offer _us_ a great deal in return."

Nat shook her head. She had to pull herself together. She _could_ get out of this – she'd escaped from worse earlier that day, without any assistance. Why did she feel so helpless now? Why did she want so badly to give up, lie down, and weep? Was it just exhaustion... or was it because Madame was _right there_ , staring at her? Was it the conditioning that had taught her Madame was the source of all love, and all punishment? For years, this woman had been the goddess of Natasha's world.

But a lot had happened since then. Nat had _met_ gods, and they weren't nearly so terrible as they liked to appear. She didn't need to let her conditioning control her. Earlier, when she'd been only half-conscious, she'd known what she had to do... but that time she hadn't been chained up, hadn't had to look Madame in the eye, and she'd been very close to actually as injured as she'd pretended to be. Now she was fully awake and Madame knew it. What were her options?

The _roles_ of the situation were fairly obvious – Madame was the disapproving mother who hadn't raised her daughter to disrespect her this way. That made Nat the rebellious child. Very well.

"All this just because I tricked you on the ship?" she rasped.

Almost imperceptibly, Madame sat up a little straighter. "You did not trick me!" she snapped. "I knew you were a fraud. I know your every move before you do, Natalia. Do not _ever_ think you can trick me."

What was that line from _Hamlet_? _The lady doth protest too much, methinks_. "If you'd thought for a minute I was capable of getting out of it, you wouldn't have tried to lock me in the brig of a navy ship," said Nat.

"It was all I had," Madame informed her. "The more notorious _you_ become, the less respect _any_ of us get! The government fears we're spending their money creating rebellious brats like you who will turn against us!"

Natasha raised her head to stare at Madame, almost as insulted as Madame herself had been a moment ago. _That_ was what this was all about? They'd come all this way, murdered several people, destroyed equipment, gone to such trouble to capture her because the Poliburo was cutting the Red Room's _funding_?

Madame could sense she had the upper hand again. "It's almost funny," she sneered. "The girl they worried so much about chained on the floor thinking SHIELD will _rescue_ her. You don't even know what SHIELD _is_. They're going to be terribly busy for the next few years, and so are we. They won't have time to miss you."

She didn't seem to plan on telling Nat what that meant. Nat didn't particularly care, either – for all she knew, it might be empty bluster. If it wasn't, she would just have to deal with it as it came. A new resolve had settled under her breastbone. There was no way she was going to let herself be dragged all the way back to St. Petersburg and tortured into subservience over _budget cuts_.

The van pulled to a stop. Natasha expected she would be made to get out, but Madame had said she wouldn't be leaving the vehicle until St. Petersburg. How was that possible when there were some fifty-five hundred miles between there and the Philippines? Madame herself showed no sign of moving. She sat there patiently for what seemed like a very long time, until Nat began to hear the roar of a helicopter rotor. It came closer and closer, and then there was a _thump_ on the roof of the truck, followed by clanking sounds and men moving around.

They were slinging the truck under a helicopter. They were going to airlift it... where? It couldn't be all the way to St. Petersburg. They'd need a long-haul jet, like the 747 Nat had been on all day, to make a non-stop flight that far. The helicopter would be taking her someplace where she could be loaded onto a larger aircraft. The biggest airport in the Philippines, and the one from which international flights usually took off and landed, was Ninoy Aquino International in Manila. That must be where they were going.

Fury would have figured that out, too – when he arrived at the hotel and she wasn't there, he would know something he was wrong. Banner could give him the description of the woman who'd taken Nat away. Even if they _were_ trying to track down the escaped _Hu Xian_ , Fury would probably at least try to meet them there. He couldn't bring the whole _Vanguard_ , because helicarriers were too slow compared to smaller craft, but he had jet fighters and helicopters of his own. There could well be an entire SWAT team waiting for them when they arrived.

What would happen then, though? Natasha had taken a SWAT team herself more than once, and she knew Madame was tougher than she was. They also had military men with them – despite her complaints about funding cuts, Madame clearly had the resources to mount an impressive offense when she had to. She'd commandeered an aircraft carrier, even if it as a very old one. Fury was a planner, an organizer. Could he do this by the seat of his pants?

He probably could, but Madame was generally pretty careful about gathering intelligence before she tried to predict what people would do, and she probably had other tricks up her sleeve just in case. Nat could not depend on help from SHIELD. Once again, she was going to have to help _herself_ , so she prioritized.

Escaping from this armoured truck would have to wait until they were back on the ground, because she didn't want to have to fall ten thousand feed twice in one day. Before she could even attempt that, she would have to get out of her chains. Then she would have to incapacitate Madame, who would certainly try to stop her, and _then_ get out of the truck. Steps one and two could be done in the air, she decided. There probably wouldn't be a lot of time in between landing and being loaded on the waiting plane. Best if she had everything else out of the way before that happened.

Once she was out of the chains, the best way to deal with Madame would probably be to open the door and throw her out. But not from so high, Nat decided, that it would kill her when she hit the ground. Madame didn't want to kill Natasha, so Natasha would give her that much in return – besides, if Madame were dead, she would merely be _dead_. If she were alive, she would have to go admit to her superiors that she had failed. She would have to live knowing that Nat had beaten her. Madame was the one who'd raised Natasha to be a killer, so killing her would in a way be letting her win. Letting her _live_ to know that Nat was tougher than her, that would be _justice_.

"I can see those wheels turning," said Madame, waggling a condescending finger. "I told you, I know your thoughts before you do. I'm the one who put them in your head."

Laoag to Manila took a little more than three hours. There was no clock inside the cell, but Natasha knew that the two cities were about three hundred miles apart and the helicopter couldn't fly at full speed when carrying something as unaerodynamic as an armoured truck. That gave her time to think. She tugged on the chains experimentally, disguising the motion as an attempt to get comfortable, but they were securely fastened and the welds held. Titanium was difficult to join, but once joined, it was just as difficult to break.

"Stop that," said Madame. "You're only wasting your time."

The chains were also light – enough so that they wouldn't be a very effective weapon. Steel restraints were much better for hitting people with. Titanium _would_ make a serviceable garrote, though, if she could only get them around Madame's neck.

"You fidget like a child," Madame said. "Do you really think I don't know what you're doing?"

"Do _you_ honestly think I'll just sit quietly while you drag me home to torture?" Nat asked. "You didn't raise me that way."

"I raised you to do as you're told!" Madame told her sharply.

Nat wound one chain around her wrist a few more times. This was going to be painful, but after all the damage her left arm had already sustained that day, what was once more?

Madame stood up and put her foot down on Nat's wrist. The truck, hanging under the helicopter, swayed as the weight shifted.

"I said _stop_ ," Madame ordered.

With a flick of her wrist, Natasha had the chain around Madame's ankle. Pull her down and go for the neck...

It didn't work. Madame kicked Nat under the chin – her head snapped back and she would have fallen over backwards, but the chains on her limbs caught her and jerked her to a stop before she reached the back doors of the armoured truck. Nat realized she'd bitten her tongue, and could now taste the blood.

Madame gathered up the chains and lifted Natasha off the floor, then dropped her heavily. The truck bounced and shook on the end of its chains. Madame put a foot down on the side of Nat's face.

"I said _stop_ ," she repeated. "Why can't you sit still?"

Natasha didn't answer, but if she had she would have told Madame that it was because she was the tough one. She wasn't the smartest, or the fastest, or the strongest, but she _endured_. She picked herself up again and kept going when she was hungry, or exhausted, or in pain. Because somewhere deep down inside her was that little girl who believed that if she passed every test she would be allowed to go back to the State Home for Girls in Volgograd, and Baba Galina would give her a home.

But why should she go on doing that? That State Home was gone – she'd burned it down. Baba Galina had died long ago. If Natasha had ever properly stopped to _think_ about these facts and deal with them, she probably would have given up. She made herself continue by ignoring them. Now, however, when she desperately needed the motivation, it was draining away. There was nothing waiting for her. Natasha had already lost, because there'd never been anything to win.

Except there was. There was the Barton family. Nat had come here in the first place to save the Barton family, the people who'd taken her in and taught her and helped her when they had nothing to gain by it. The children she could never have, and the woman who'd taught her the handicrafts that Baba Galina had never gotten the opportunity to. And Clint, whom she would always be a little bit in love with even as she knew it could never happen. The Red Room had taken one home and one family from her forever, but the Barton family had given her another.

She had to get up. Madame's foot was still on her face – maybe she wouldn't expect Nat to try the same thing twice. Natasha moved her arm to get the chain around her captor's leg.

Madame kicked her in the face again. "You're impossible," she said, returning to her seat. "All this time you've been calling yourself the Black Widow, as if you were the only one. You're just _a_ black widow. If anyone is _the_ Black Widow, it's me. I will always be greater than you."

"Then you're a terrible teacher," Natasha hissed through the blood in her teeth.

The sound of the rotor blades changed, and after what felt like an endless, drifting descent, the wheels of the truck touched pavement. Nat heard the sounds as the chains holding it to the helicopter were unhooked.

"You were lying about the bombs in the hotel," she realized.

"I could still set them off," Madame told her.

That wasn't true, though – she hadn't threatened Natasha with them once on the entire flight. Having used the ruse to get her target out of the building, Madame had forgotten all about it. A classic liar's mistake, forgetting what your lies were. The truth was so much easier to remember.

The truck engine started, and they drove up an incline. Nat could hear the sound echoing in a large, open space with metal walls. They must be on a cargo plane. More noises represented workers lashing the truck to the floor.

If Fury _were_ going to come for her, now was the time.

She expected the plane to take off right away, but it lingered a while, as voices and mechanical noises were heard outside. They were loading more cargo. The echos made the space sound too large for a passenger plane's hod, so at least there wouldn't be so many civilians on board this time. Perhaps they were passing this off as a shipment of vehicles. Maybe they could fly directly to St. Petersburg with that, but it seemed more likely that they would make a series of stops. That way they wouldn't have to carry as much fuel.

Madame continued sitting in front of Natasha, her lips pressed thin. She wasn't going to kill her, but she wouldn't let her try anything, either.

Finally the cargo doors shut with a deep, shuddering thump. The plane taxied slowly out onto the runway, and the engines revved as they prepared to take off. Natasha hung her head. It seemed like Madame was right. SHIELD was not coming for her. Maybe the _Hu Xian_ 's escape had blown a hole in the side of the _Vanguard_ , or filled the ship with gas. Or maybe Nat had simply done her job too well. Maybe they assumed she could take care of it, just as she'd taken care of everything else she'd come up against that day.

The engines roared and the truck moved slightly as the takeoff roll began – and then everything came suddenly to a violent halt. It felt as if the plane had hit a cliff, so hard that it was tilting up on its nose. Cargo shifted. Chains and cords snapped. A car horn went off, and after a brief moment in which it seemed to be balancing with its tail in the air, the entire aircraft did a somersault and landed on its back with a crash.

It all happened so fast there was very little time to react. By the time Nat knew what was happening, she was dangling upside-down above the fluorescent light fixture in the ceiling, and Madame was lying on her right. Nat grabbed her chains to try to untangle herself, while Madame picked herself up and went for the door.

Nat's head was spinning, but she knew this was her chance. She looped the chain around Madame's neck and pulled as hard as she could, lifting her feet off the ground. Madame did not cry out, but she reached up to put her hands under the chain, trying to break it. She couldn't do so. Natasha used her legs to put more chains around Madame's neck and pulled harder. The woman gasped and kicked for quite some time, before finally going limp.

Outside, Natasha could hear machine guns. She reached into Madame's pocket.

A hand grabbed her wrist, and there was an explosion of pain accompanied by a juicy _crunch_. Natasha gritted her teeth so she wouldn't scream. Madame slammed her head against the wall.

"You're not the only one who can play possum," she spat in Nat's ear. She broke the truck doors open with a kick, and went to see what was going on.

Natasha hung there and quietly counted to twenty, then opened her eyes and began undoing her bonds with the key she'd snatched from Madame's blazer with her right hand – while Madame had been busy, breaking her left wrist.

It took only seconds to get the chains off. Nat dropped onto the ceiling of the truck and pulled off her pajama pants to make them into a sling for her wrist. Then she climbed out of the truth to see what was happening.

As she'd suspected, she was inside a huge cargo transport plane. It had been loaded up with a variety of vehicles, many of which were now on their sides and partially crushed. The smell of spilled jet fuel was thick in the air, and a large section of the fuselage was missing, torn away to leave rough edges like a sheet of torn paper. What could have done _that_?

Natasha suddenly felt like she knew.

The back cargo door of the fuselage, where they'd presumably come in, was still in place. The front, however, was open – to open the front cargo door the entire nose of the plane, including the cockpit, had to be folded up. Something had physically torn it off its hinges. When Nat climbed over the wreckage of another truck to get out, she saw that the plane had also lost a wing. It was lying on the far side of the runway.

Just beyond towered the Hulk. He was holding half of an immense jet engine, ripped from the missing ring, using it as a shield against a fire truck that was trying to fend him off with a hose.

The Hulk could take care of himself. As long as he didn't come near _her_ , Nat decided she wasn't going to bother with him. Where was Madame?

As she climbed over the wreckage, Nat observed that in a way, Madame had been right after all. Natasha _had_ been counting on SHIELD, maybe not to _rescue_ her exactly but certainly to deal with the cleanup. The whole time, she'd figured that once she'd beaten the bad guys – be they terrorists, black widows, or something else entirely – Fury would arrive to handle the arrests and make sure the guilty parties never hurt anybody again. If the the Hulk were here, Fury was probably on his way, but Natasha now realized she couldn't wait for him. Like any black widow whose mission had failed catastrophically, Madame had probably decided to cut and run. Natasha would not allow it.

She also observed that this was, objectively, ridiculous. Nat was beaten up and bruised, her wrist broken and stitches in her elbow. She'd fallen from a plane today, and blown a hole in the deck of an aircraft carrier... surely she'd done enough! Yet here she was, wounded and exhausted and _still_ hunting down her target.

Because that was what she did. Natasha wasn't the smartest or the strongest, but she was the one who never, ever stopped. Not when she had a home to go back to.

Madame had said she knew what Nat would do next, because she'd taught it to her. That could work the other way, though – Natasha knew what _Madame_ would do next, because she'd learned it from her. So if Nat had been bringing a slippery target back to St. Petersburg, only to find her final push foiled by an eleven-foot green monster that was probably the precursor to a troop of soldiers coming to arrest her, what would she do?

She was at an airport, so she would steal a plane and escape.

They were at the foot of the runway, still close to the international cargo terminal where the plane had been parked for loading. There were several cargo craft of various sizes parked there, all ignored as emergency vehicles rushed to deal with the unfolding drama of the Hulk battle. Natasha ran towards the terminal as if she were flying the wreck in terror, but her mind was working.

If she'd been in Madame's situation and had known her target was likely to come after her, she would have set a trap. Nat had gotten up every time Madame had knocked her down so far. Madame was sure of herself, and with good reason, but if she weren't worried about it happening again, she was an idiot. Nat would have to be very, very careful.

She avoided both the nearest plane, and the largest. Those were obvious and Madame would not take them. Something small. Something that could take off quickly and wouldn't attract a lot of attention.

At the edge of the tarmac was a little Cessna Cargomaster with the FedEx logo painted on the side. That was probably used for flying parcels around the islands and perhaps to nearby international destinations like Malaysia. It would get madame out of the country and allow her to get in contact with her superiors. It was exactly what she would need.

Now Natasha needed a weapon. She looked around, and spotted a fuel trick. It was parked nearby, one door open – whoever had been driving it had run to either help or escape from the Hulk fight. Natasha climbed into the cab and looked around. The place stank of fuel, and automatically she checked to see the status of the tanks. They were full. No wonder the driver had fled – if the fighting got this far, the vehicle would become a giant bomb.

As she searched the cab, looking for a fire extinguisher or a crash axe, Nat heard a propeller start. Madame _was_ in the plane, and she was going to take off while Natasha was distracted. Nat did some mental math. A plane that small would have a takeoff speed of around sixty or seventy miles per hour, and Madame would not be able to accelerate even to that until she got to the _second_ runway, which was about a kilometre away at a right angle to the first. Unless, of course, she thought she could take off _over_ the fight going on.

Evidently she did. She turned onto the base of the first runway.

If she got away, that was technically not a loss. Madame would go home to be punished by her superiors and do... whatever it was she did when she wasn't training black widows or hunting Natasha all over the South Pacific. But Nat wasn't going to let that happen. Her insides were boiling now. This woman had taken from Natasha the closest thing to a family she remembered – Baba Galina – and destroyed all records that might have led her to her real parents. Now she'd tried to take her _new_ family from her. Nat wasn't going to let that slide. It seemed as if the most important thing in Madame's life was the Red Room, so Nat was going to make sure she could never, ever go back to it.

She hotwired the truck – painful with her broken wrist, but doable – and started the engine. She would have to catch up before Madame reached the runway, and if anything went wrong she was sitting in a vehicle full of jet fuel. She couldn't dump it because there were fires among the wreck of the giant cargo plane, and people were still firing bullets at the Hulk. In so many ways, this could all go terribly wrong.

The Cessna couldn't move very fast on the ground, but neither could the heavy fuel truck, which had never been intended to be used in a car chase. Natasha pushed the pedal to the floor and did her best, with the truck's entire chassis shaking in the turbulent air that had been stirred up by the little plane's propellers. Madame increased the throttle. Nat moved to the side to get out of the turbulence, and pulled up beside her.

How many damned times, she wondered, was she going to have to climb onto a moving plane today?

Nat grabbed the tip of the wing with her good arm and swung her legs around it. The still-moving fuel truck swung away and rolled off the runway to fall onto its side in the grass. It did not explode, but Natasha could see that one of the tanks had ruptured and was spilling jet fuel out onto the grass. That would not end well.

She had other things to take care of first, though. Nat inched her way up the wing and hung over the side of it to look into the cockpit. She could pick the lock on the door and climb in...

There was nobody in it.

Nat's stomach seemed to drop right out of her and splat on the runaway below. The pilot's seat was empty. Sticks and pedals had been tied and weighted in place to keep the plane going down the runway – directly towards the battle between the fire department at the Hulk. With nobody to raise the plane's nose for takeoff, it would plough right into the wreckage of the larger cargo plane.

She had to get off the plane, but how? Getting into the cockpit would take too long – she had only seconds. Madame had presumably bailed out while the Cessna was still moving at a fairly low speed. If Nat tried to jump out now, she'd be hurt badly, or even killed.

Nat was out of ideas. She just held on as hard as she could, shut her eyes, and hoped Madame was right. Hopefully, she really was made of marble... but even marble could shatter.


	14. Chapter 14: Unstoppable Force

The impact came sooner than she'd expected, and yet surprisingly gentle. Nat ran into somethi solid, and then suddenly she was flying through the air. Everything was dark and hot and stank of petroleum, and the sounds around her descended into a chaotic cacophony in which she could not distinguish individual sounds or voices. There was a hard bounce, although something cushioned her from direct impact with the ground, and then... she stopped.

Breathing hard, and her broken wrist on fire, Natasha opened her eyes.

The Hulk was standing on the roof of the Y-shaped terminal building. Spread out below was a mess of wreckage and fire. The broken cargo plane, an immense Antonov 124 Ruslan, was still burning, its cargo spilled across the runway like the guts of a slain dragon. A line of ferocious flames connected it with the rolled fuel truck. Firefighters were shouting at each other in Spanish and Tagalog as they battled to bring it under control.

Natasha was nestled in the crook of the Hulk's giant arm, watching it all unfold.

The Hulk himself was looking down at her as if he wasn't sure what she was. He reached a giant green finger, the size of a genoa salami, to touch her hair,and she shied away, rolling out of his arms to land heavily on her feet on the gravel roof. For a moment, the two locked eyes, neither moving. The Hulk's eyes were electric green, and he smelled of musk and sweat and gunpowder.

Then the fuel truck finally exploded. The Hulk winced at the sound, then ran to the edge of the roof to roar at it – and Nat's heart leaped into her throat. If he decided to go destroy the remains of the truck, he could spread the fire, or hurt the firefighters, medics, and policemen who were arriving to help.

"No!" Natasha stood up straight and waved her good arm. "No! Look at me!"

The Hulk turned towards her again, teeth bared. Her legs trembled... but the civilians needed to be able to do their jobs without any more superheroic interference.

"Look at me," she repeated. "I'm right here. Hey."

The Hulk balled his fists and roared at her. Nat stumbled backwards, but she knew that if she ran, he would chase her. Those who'd handled the Hulk _well_ , like Rogers, had looked him in the eye and talked to him. That was what Natasha had to do now, no matter how terrified she may be. She _understood_ soldiers and airplanes and weapons. The Hulk was unpredictable, unknown.

"Hey, big guy," she said, a little more gently. "Look at me. _Thank_ you." She reached out a shaking right hand. "Thank you. You saved my life. Thank you. Do you understand?"

The Hulk cocked his head. His face was perpetually twisted into an angry sneer, but now Natasha thought she detected a hint of confusion in it, to. He reached out, and her trembling fingers touched one of his. The skin was rough, but only because each tiny wrinkle and pore present in a normal human hand was magnified several times. Veins stood out like ropes, and Nat could see them gently pulsing. His nails were short and striated, rough at the tips, and she realized Banner must bite them.

She raised her head to look him in the eye again. He _could_ grab her – he could grab her and throw her off the roof, even more easily than Madame had thrown Yelena through the window of the hotel. Yet he didn't seem particularly inclined to do so. This was not Bruce Banner, but nor was it an entirely unthinking monster.

And in the moment Natasha realized that, she knew exactly what it was she would do next. She stood up straight, looking the monster in the eye.

"Listen to me, Hulk," she said, her voice now firm and confident even as her knees continued to shake. "You want the white woman. She's the one who made them drive the airplane into you. She's the one who had the soldiers shoot you, and tried to hurt me. Do you understand?"

The Hulk tilted his head the other way. His expression now was of intense concentration. He was trying.

"She must have gotten off the small plane before I got onto it," Natasha went on. "She'll still be here somewhere. I'll help you find her, and you can smash her!"

The Hulk's eyes lit up. Whatever else he did or didn't understand, he understood _smash_.

He reached for Natasha. It was all she could do not to duck away from his oncoming hand, but she managed to hold her ground. The Hulk scooped her up and leaped off the roof, leaving a crater in the taxiway where he landed, and began charging up the runway towards the burning planes. Nat tried to ignore her rattling bones as she looked around for evidence of where Madame had bailed out. There wasn't much to see... where would the woman have gone, after escaping the plane?

Obviously, the parking lot. Nat pounded on the Hulk's arm to get his attention.

"Other side of the building!" she shouted.

He came to a screeching halt and bared his teeth at her. Did he think she was trying to trick him? Natasha winced in expectation of fetid breath, but it actually wasn't all that bad. The Hulk hadn't eaten anything since transforming, and Banner had probably brushed his teeth only hours earlier.

"She'll be trying to steal a car and escape," Nat said. "We have to stop her. _Trust_ me!"

But why should the Hulk trust her? The first time he'd seen her, she'd been running away from him, and it was easy to imagine that he would know from sharing his brain with Banner that Natasha Romanov was one of the least trustworthy people alive. After all, _their_ first meeting hadn't gone well, either.

Then again, the _second_ time the Hulk had seen Natasha, she'd been fighting by his side. He hesitated a moment, and then took a running start before taking a flying leap over the building. A moment ago Nat had been terrified to touch the Hulk – now she clung to his arm and hoped he knew what he was doing as they sailed through the air for what seemed like an awfully long time. On the other side of the terminal he landed directly on top of a parked news van, crushing it flat.

The reporters who'd been covering the airport fire stared up at him in horror. The cameraman screamed, dropped his equipment, and ran with his colleagues close behind him. Nat knew it was up to her to keep the Hulk from following them.

"White woman! White woman!" she urged him. "She's here somewhere... she has no scent!" Smell was something she was fairly sure was important to the Hulk. Maybe he could identify her by her lack of it.

The reporters were running towards the road – where a black Grand Cherokee was pulling out of the lot. Could that be Madame? Nat was still trying to figure out how to tell when the Hulk snorted and bounded after it. In a few flying leaps, he was in its path. The reporters realized the monster was now in front of them and scattered like mice. Nat caught a glimpse of Madame in the driver's seat – her ice-blue eyes went wide as she realized what was in front of her, but then she set her jaw and sped up, determined to run the Hulk down.

She should have known better. The Hulk had stopped an airplane twenty minutes ago. A four-year-old SUV wasn't going to touch him. He set Natasha gently down on the road, then widened his stance and let the vehicle hit him. The front end of it crumpled like an accordion. Airbags inflated, alarms went off, and the car stopped dead while the Hulk remained as immovable as a brick wall.

Natasha breathed out. She knew Madame had survived that, because _she_ could have. Now would come the hard part, which would be convincing the Hulk to let SHIELD take care of Madame instead of dismembering her himself. He was already raising a fist to pummel the SUV into oblivion with the woman still inside it.

"Wait," Natasha said firmly. "Don't do that!"

The Hulk turned and snarled at her. A moment ago she'd promised to let him smash this woman.

"Wait until Nick Fury gets here," said Nat. "You know who Nick Fury is, right?" She still wanted Madame to have to live with her failure.

But the Hulk was not remotely interested. He grabbed the car in both hands and lifted it, apparently intending to slam it against the ground again, but then a white shape wriggled out of the broken passenger-side window and landed on its feet on the ground. It took a lot to shock Natasha, but that did it – she was confident she would have _survived_ that crash, but Madame didn't appear to have so much as a scratch. Could she really be _that_ tough?

Maybe she could. Natasha had been given eight annual doses of the Soviet serum. Madame, if even half the rumors about her were true, must have had at least thirty. The Hulk's own invulnerability came from a treatment based on the same principles. Maybe she really _was_ made of marble.

The Hulk, too, had noticed she was up, and he knew exactly what to do about it. He brought the car back down to squash her with it like an inset.

Madame dashed aside as the car hit the pavement. Metal screamed and glass smashed, but Madame was on her feet and running towards the road. Furious, the Hulk threw the car aside and tried to grab her with his bare hands. She did a backflip, pushed off his arm, and spun over his head. Hulk whirled around to backhand her, knocking her into the side of a semi truck. Madame landed in a heap on the pavement, but managed to be up and roll between his legs as he came at her.

The Hulk was brute strength, but Madame was faster and more agile, and Natasha could already see that this was going to end in her escaping while he destroyed half the airport in rage. This was Nat's fault – she'd been an idiot to think she could control the Hulk, but she'd been so determined to bring Madame in and the Hulk was the only thing she'd met today that was more powerful. She would have to get him out of the way to deal with Madame herself, but _how_? In a contest of strength, Madame could beat Natasha easily and already had. There had to be something else. She had to be vulnerable _somewhere_.

Nat's mind raced back over the events of the day, and found it – electricity.

A taser disc had taken Yelena down on the plane, rendering her unconscious long enough for Nat and Triinu to make their failed agreement. An ordinary taser had knocked Eglė out on the _Tugarin Zmeyevich_. Clint had taken Natasha herself down in Budapest with an electrified arrow. Whatever was in that serum, it did not protect the widows' nervous systems from electrocution, and hopefully that would be as true of Madame as it was of any of the others.

What could she use? The airport would obviously have its own generator, but Natasha didn't want to damage property or hurt herself by overloading that. She needed something else. Something small. Something she could wield like a weapon.

There was a fire truck parked not far away, its lights still flashing – the firemen had abandoned it in a panic when the Hulk had jumped down from the roof. Nat climbed in and found the CB radio.

"Fury!" she said, tuning it to a SHIELD frequency. "Fury, I need something!"

"Oh, my god!" a woman's voice exclaimed, sharp in Natasha's ears. There was a clattering sound, and the same voice called out, more muffled this time, "Director! I've got her! I've got her!"

A scrape of metal on metal represented the microphone being snatched up. "Natasha!" Fury exclaimed, his voice crackling over – the radio reception was not good. "Are you all right?"

"Mostly," she replied. "I've got a couple more broken bits but I'll recover. I need a set of widow bites. _Now_."

"There's a hole in the side of the _Vanguard_ ," Fury said. That must have been where the widows had rescued the _Hu Xian_ , but when Nat thought about it, even if the ship had been in one piece it would have taken hours to reach Manila. Helicarriers were very much like their water-based counterparts in that they were armed to the teeth but terribly slow. "That's why Banner offered to go on ahead."

Nat would have to thank him for that, if not for scaring her half to death. "I don't care how you get them to me, just do it, preferably within the next few minutes," she ordered. She had to take care of this before Madame escaped or the Hulk hurt anyone. "I'm at Ninoy Aquino, outside terminal One. If you need my exact coordinates..." she glanced up at the window. The Hulk was throwing cars aside in the effort to get to Madame, who was weaving between them. "I won't be hard to find."

She hung up the radio receiver and paused for a moment. After all she'd been through today, here was Nat, _calling for help_. She was doing exactly what Madame had belittled her for during their helicopter ride, depending on other people instead of on herself alone. Even if this all worked out, would it really be _her_ victory with the Hulk as her muscle and Fury as her errand boy?

Natasha wasn't quite finished with that thought when she was broken out of it by the sight of Madame's body, flying through the air to smash through the windows in the curved front of the terminal building. The Hulk bellowed in triumph and ran after her, charging right through a separate, unbroken section of the glass wall. Nat thought that was rather unnecessary.

She climbed down out of the fire truck, hoping as she did that everyone in the airport had already been evacuated. Nat didn't want to have to worry about civilians – keeping Madame and the Hulk from destroying the entire building was going to be enough of a challenge without screaming people running around getting hurt. She ran for the door, wishing she'd had some shoes to put on. Getting broken glass out of her feet was never any fun.

Inside, the building was empty but the power, provided by the airport's generator, was still on, and the vast terminal space was lit by hundreds of fluorescent tubes in the ceiling. Madame and the Hulk were squaring off over masses of broken glass and abandoned luggage. Madame seemed to have decided she needed to keep her distance, and was trying to fend off the Hulk by throwing things at him – shards of glass that he swatted away like insects, suitcases and luggage carts that he caught and threw back, or tore to pieces in his increasing fury and frustration.

In the sunshine on the deck of the _Zmeyevich_ , Madame's skin had looked pale. Under the wan glow of the fluorescent lighting, she looked almost transparent. Nat could have sworn she saw veins and organs under the woman's skin, as if Madame were a cave fish or a glass frog. Would Natasha herself look like that someday, or would she have had to keep taking the serum every year?

The Hulk ripped a currency exchange kiosk off its bolts and threw it at Madame. She scrambled onto a counter to avoid it, and the Hulk bounded over to grab her by the legs. She, however, managed to slip out of his grip and ran up his arm to his shoulders, where she put her legs around his neck and began trying to choke him.

Nat had studied Banner's file very thoroughly before going to Calcutta to fetch him. If the Hulk lost consciousness, he would revert to Banner, and Natasha had not the slightest doubt that Madame would snap Bruce Banner in half without a second thought. Banner was a civilian as much as any of the emergency personnel fighting the fires out back. His alter ego might have been an indestructible monster, but Banner himself was just a lonely man who wished he could destroy _himself_. Nat knew that, because he'd told them all so.

So as weird as it was, Natasha was going to have to save the Hulk.

She should have brought the fire truck – the hoses would have been a good way to break up the fight, but getting the vehicle indoors would have meant driving it through _another_ part of the wall, and there was enough stuff broken in here. What she _could_ use, however, was the airport's own firefighting equipment. A multilingual sign directed her to a glass door over a small inset cabinet, containing a coiled hose and spigot. She broke the glass, pulled the hose out, and turned the handle. Water came gushing out, clear and cold.

And _hard_. Nat needed both hands to control it, which was hell on her broken wrist. She turned in a circle, wrapping the hose around her waist to help her hang on, and aimed at Madame and the Hulk. The Hulk was on his knees now, pawing at her in the attempt to get her off as she continued to tighten her hold. Nat was familiar with the technique: tighten the grip a little bit after each exhalation, like a python. Every time the victim breathed in, a little less air would make it into the lungs and eventually the oxygen-starved brain would simply give way. Tendons were standing out in the Hulk's neck, and his eyes were bulging.

The torrent of water hit the Hulk in the chest. He was too tough to be moved by it, but when Natasha raised the spray it hit Madame in the face. Perhaps she was just as _strong_ as the Hulk, but she did not have the same amount of inertia. She wasn't prepared for the force of the water, and it blasted her torso backwards, forcing her to let go of the Hulk's neck. He turned around and immediately brought a giant fist down on top of her, shattering tiles for several feet around.

Nat turned off the hose and waited. Was that it? It must be, she thought... even Madame couldn't survive a direct hit from the Hulk. So far she'd kept dodging. She _must_ be dead this time, and despite her original intentions Nat wasn't about to lose sleep over it.

But then the tiles moved, and Madame began to get slowly to her feet. Her clothing was torn and now Nat thought the flesh beneath it really _was_ getting more transparent, as if the blow had robbed her of some opacity. She was not broken, though. Merely soaking wet – and enraged.

"Monster!" she spat.

The Hulk widened his stance. The two of them were about to resume their battle.

Nat had an idea.

"Hulk!" she called, and ran out into his path. She winced as her feet moved over broken glass, but kept going, waving her good arm. "Lift me up!"

The Hulk was not interested. He made for Madame, who steeled herself to meet him.

Nat ran and climbed up his back, which made him stop and roar. He didn't want anyone trying to strangle him again. From this height, Nat pulled herself up to the ledge of windows around the upper level of the room, where there were offices and administrative facilities on the second floor, above the security checkpoints. The furious Hulk jumped up after her. She then swung herself up to kick out a ceiling panel and get into the crawl space above, where the utilities ran – power, water, and telephones. A giant green fist came up after her, ripping out a handful of piping. Water poured down onto the floor.

"Good!" Natasha told him. "Now drop that cable!" As the Hulk's face appeared in the hole he'd made, she pointed to one particularly fat bundle of power lines. "Do it!"

For a moment she was quite sure he was going to grab her and snap her like a matchstick, but then, to her astonishment, he obeyed. The Hulk ripped the cable down and dropped it, sparking, into the growing pool of water below. The lights in the terminal flickered, fuses blew, and there was a nasty electrical smell not unlike the one in the cockpit when the bomb went off but much, much worse.

Then darkness fell as the power went out.

It took Natasha about half a second to realize she was now in a small space with the Hulk right next to her, and claustrophobia took over. She couldn't stay there, where she could be easily squashed. She dropped through one of the torn-out panels and landed on the ledge again, from which she could survey the scene.

The terminal was in ruins and partially flooded, with water still cascading down from the ceiling. That probably wasn't a bad thing, since there were now several fires, started by the short circuit, burning in various parts of the room. In the center of it all, Madame was face-down in the crater where the Hulk had hit her, half-naked and still.

Nat climbed down from the roof of another kiosk, from there to the floor, and went to sling the unconscious woman over her shoulders.

Hulk landed in front of her with a thump, and reached for Madame.

"No." Natasha held up her left hand. The wrist felt like it had been ground into paste, and she was probably going to need a cast to help it heal, which would be a first for her... and almost kind of a privilege, really. Not many black widows every managed to damage themselves badly enough to need normal medical care – and those who did, as several of them had demonstrated that day, often didn't live long enough to receive it.

The Hulk looked affronted, snorting like a bull. He wanted to destroy the woman who'd hurt him.

"No," Natasha repeated. "We've got her. It's done now. You can turn back into Banner."

But _that_ seemed to make the Hulk very angry indeed. He stood up straight and puffed out his chest, gave a roar and raised his fists together as if to slam them down on Natasha.

She stood her ground, keeping her gaze locked to his. If she'd done this on the Helicarrier before the Battle of New York, would it have ended differently? Would he have backed down, or would she merely have been killed? Which of those things were going to happen _now_?

Before either could, a bright light swept the room, making Natasha and the Hulk both look up. Nat realized that over the sounds of collapsing masonry and blaring sirens, she could also hear jet engines. A quinjet was hovering over the parking lot outside, searching for them. The Hulk didn't like that. He turned around and burst out the glass wall in yet a _third_ place, and disappeared into the night.

Nat climbed over the wreckage with Madame still on her back, and got outside to see the quinjet landing in the parking lot. The ramp came down, and she carried her prisoner on board. At first she assumed it would be either Fury or Chiba in the pilot's seat, but the person she actually found was Clint. He turned around, offering her a bag that must've had her widow bites in it.

"Let me guess," he said, watching her put Madame in a seat. "I missed the party."

"As usual." Nat nodded. "Don't worry, there'll be another one." She sat down and sighed. "Take me home."

He nodded and raised the ramp. " _Home_ -home, or the _Vanguard_."

 _Home_ -home would mean the farm... and she suspected if that's what she chose, he would do it, only stopping in Laoag to pick up Laura and the kids on the way. That sounded nice, but Natasha knew her job still wasn't quite over. "Better be the _Vanguard_ ," she said. "Fury's gonna want me to file a report."

* * *

There was no discussion over whether Nat would be present when Madame came to, because there was nothing to discuss. She fully intended to be there, even with her wrist in a cast, to look her nemesis in the eye and tell her she'd lost. And she would do it in her black tacsuit with her emblem on her belt and all her gear in place – not because she thought she was going to need any of it, but because that was who Natasha Romanov was. She wasn't a cringing little girl frightened of her mistress, and she wasn't the tool and puppet of some monolithic and unfeeling State. She was the Black Widow.

They'd put Madame in the _Vanguard_ 's HCC – its Hulk Containment Chamber. There was no furniture, and the whole place had been scrubbed clean of any protruding piece or speck of dust that might be useful as a weapon. This was no deteriorating Soviet aircraft carrier. The lock was on the other side of the room, controlled by a fingerprint scanner. The walls were three inches of Trivex. A container like this one had held Loki, and nearly held Thor. It could hold Madame.

"Have a nice nap?" asked Fury as she raised her head. They'd dressed her in a white coverall, with no pockets or zippers, after carefully searching her for any and all hidden weapons or tools. Including several places where Natasha would much rather not have had to look.

Madame sat up, cross-legged, and didn't reply.

"Valeria Boyko," said Fury formally. "That's your name, isn't it? Our sources say you're a Ukrainian peasant's daughter – your parents were sent to the gulags in 1931 a part of the dekulakization, and you were placed with the Red Room."

Madame still didn't answer.

"You are under arrest for kidnapping, destruction of public property, and child abuse," Fury went on. "Our lawyers are looking into your other crimes to see what we can make stick. You have the right to remain silent, although it may damage your defense if you fail to mention something you later rely on in court. And you have the right to an attorney – if you can't afford an attorney the court will appoint one for you. After all," he added, "this is a democracy."

Silence.

"Have a nice day," Fury finished, and turned to stalk out of the room.

Natasha stood there, waiting for Madame to speak first. She was prepared to wait all day if necessary, but in fact it was only a couple of minutes.

"Look at you," said Madame. "Standing at attention beside him like a good doggy. You were made to be better than that."

"No," Nat said. "I was made to be _somebody's_ good doggy. You're just angry that I wasn't yours." She stepped closer. "My mother left a letter with me when she dropped me off at the State Home for Girls in Volgograd." Baba Galina had promised to read it to her when she was old enough to understand it. "What did it say?"

"I don't know." Madame smirked. "I never read it. I ordered it burned."

Nat had expected that answer, but she was still a little disappointed – that was the only clue she might have ever had to who _her_ family was, and it was gone forever. She would just have to live with that.

"I figure this will be the part where you make fun of me because I asked for help," said Nat. "So I want you to know I'm not ashamed of that. You taught us to hate one another because you knew that if we worked together we'd be stronger than you. I overcame it. That's why you'll never be anything but a black widow. I'm _the_ Black Widow," she said proudly. "I'm an Avenger." She turned to walk away.

"You really think you're serving some higher purpose by being a part of SHIELD?" asked Madame. "Because if you do you're even stupider than I thought! Oh, the things I could tell you about SHIELD!"

Nat paused. What if Madame _did_ know something Nat didn't? But even if she did, Natasha knew it wouldn't be information she could trust. It would be lies and half-truths, designed to raise suspicion but not give her anything concrete she could confirm or refute. "You have nothing to say that I want to hear," she said, without turning around.

"This won't hold me," Madame said. "You have no idea what I'm capable of. You don't even know what _you're_ capable of – or what you _could_ be, with just a little more time."

Natasha thought about the serum, and about the fact that this woman had been almost a match for the Hulk, but she shook herself out of that, too. "Maybe I don't want to know," she said, and this time she really did walk away.

Fury hadn't gone far – he was waiting for her just outside.

"What do the results show?" Natasha asked. What had the Soviet scientists done to Madame in the over seventy years they'd had to work on her body, mind, and genetic code – and by extension, what had they don't to Natasha herself, in far less time but with far more experience?

"They're still working on them," said Fury. The two walked together back towards the Helicarrier's sick bay. "But her body's properties seem... malleable."

"She's... what, a shape-shifter?" asked Natasha. That was absurd, but no more so than an army of aliens led by a disgruntled god.

"Not exactly," said Fury. "More like she can borrow powers from anyone around her. Put her in a contest with the Hulk and she becomes as strong as she is. We'll avoid testing it," he added. An implicit promise to keep people with powers away from her cell.

Nat nodded slowly. "So... that stuff they gave us might not have been super-soldier serum after all." What did that mean for _her_?

"Well, she's also almost as old as Rogers and didn't spend any of it frozen," Fury reminded her. "So she's had a hell of a lot more of if than you ever did." He put a hand on her shoulder. "I don't think you need to worry too much. You're no monster, Natasha. You're just damned good at what you do."

"Am I," said Natasha quietly. Whatever else had been done to her and the others, Madame had raised them to be monsters. In some cases, like Yelena, she'd succeeded. Who was to say Natasha herself was any better? Nobody would deny that the Hulk was a monster, no matter whose side he was on. "Are we heading right back to the States now?" she asked.

"Almost. We're making a stop in Sulawesi first," Fury said.

"What's in Sulawesi?" Natasha frowned. Sulawesi was at the other end of the island chain, over a thousand miles from Manila.

"What do you think?" Fury asked.


	15. Chapter 15: Epilogue

Natasha found out what was in Sulawesi a few hours later, when she and Fury took a quinjet to a beach just north of the seaside town of Bukaan. A couple of local fishermen looked up in surprise as they went over, but Fury ignored them, and touched down softly on a beach a couple of miles up the coast.

There were two figures waiting for them there. One was a solicitous orang-utan which had approached the other to offer a papaya. The other, lying exhausted on the sand in the shreds of his clothing, was Bruce Banner. For a moment, even though she knew better, Nat was afraid he was dead. As the quinjet's hatch opened, letting the hot, damp tropical air flood into the cabin, the terrified ape knuckled away up the beach towards the trees – but Banner did not move.

Nat hurried down the ramp towards him, barely noticing the thick green smell of the nearby jungle. "Dr. Banner?" she asked, kneeling next to him on the sand.

That was when she realized his eyes were open. He was awake and conscious, he had simply _chosen_ not to get up. He turned to look at her, and asked, "how many were killed?"

She hesitated a moment before replying. There _had_ been civilians at the airport – firefighters, reporters, and in the early stages of the affair probably innocent travelers as well. Nat had done her best to keep the Hulk away from them while he'd been with her, but before that had happened there'd been the battle around the wreck of the cargo plane. People had definitely been hurt in that, but they would have been mostly the mooks Madame had brought with her. She decided to reply, "only the bad guys."

Banner sat up stiffly and heaved a sigh as he leaned forward, arms resting on his knees. "Bad guys," he repeated distantly.

Nat understood at once. Not all 'bad guys' were necessarily bad _people_. Living under every evil empire were the ordinary human beings just trying to get by. Individuals who might take a job because they needed the money, and didn't really know who they were working for or what they were getting into, who had lives and families and whose plans for the day had not included fighting a couple of superheroes.

Those were the people Natasha often forgot about. She'd certainly forgotten about them last night – she'd been so determined to bring Madame in alive, one way or another, that everything else had fallen by the wayside. The black widows were brought up to believe that those people didn't matter, that they were merely obstacles, but that wasn't true. Of course it wasn't.

That was the moment when Nat realized she wasn't scared anymore. The Hulk hadn't hurt her when she'd stood up to him, and Banner... Banner was just a tired, anxious man who saw his life as a string of failures to be _quite_ good enough. Like anybody else, Natasha was afraid of what she didn't understand. But she understood _that_ just fine.

"So are you going to vanish into the jungle again?" she asked, sitting down next to him.

"I'm thinking about it," he admitted.

"The neighbours seem nice." She glanced at the place where the orang-utan had disappeared.

"Not great conversationalists, though," said Bruce.

"Or cooks," Nat agreed, glancing at the discarded papaya. "The diet would get really monotonous."

"I don't know, there's quite a variety of fruit in Indonesia," Bruce said. He began to smile a bit as he asked, "have you ever had _durian_?"

"Yes, I have, actually," Nat replied with a proud smile. "Smells like turpentine, tastes like custard. Taste is supposed to be mostly smell, so I've never figured out how that works."

"It's a scientific mystery," Bruce said with a knowing nod, and then his face became serious again. "I'm so tired of running and hiding all the time," he said. "I _know_ that if I'm around people I'm going to end up hurting someone..."

"But running is exhausting," Nat finished for him. "It's good to have a place to sit down and know that it's yours, and nobody can bother you there." A place to be anchored, a bed she could chain herself to metaphorically if not with physical cuffs. "You don't realize how badly you need it until you get it back after a long time doing without."

"Yeah," he said.

Fury looked out of the back of the quinjet. "Are you coming, lovebirds?" he asked. "Because I'm not taking you all the way back to New York. If you want to be there to see Thor off, you've got a plane to catch!"

"I hate flying," Bruce muttered, then corrected himself. "Actually... I don't hate the actual flight part. It's _airports_ I hate."

"Airports make everybody angry enough to become the Hulk." Nat stood up and offered a hand. "Are you coming?"

After a moment's more indecision, Bruce let her help him to his feet. "Stark _did_ offer to show me around the Tower," he said.

"An offer he normally only makes to women," Natasha said with a smirk, and then she got an idea. "If you don't mind my asking a strange question, Dr. Banner... have you ever been hypnotized?"

He blinked at her a few times in obvious confusion. "Uh, no. I don't think I have. What's that got to do with anything?"

She helped him sit down in one of the quinjet's seats, and offered him a SHIELD flight suit to put on over the tattered remains of his trousers. "The Hulk is sort of a psychological phenomenon, isn't he?" she asked. "He comes and goes according to triggers in your thoughts and emotions."

"That's right," said Bruce. "I have _some_ idea what brings him out... less so what puts him away again."

Nat sat down across from him. "I just thought, maybe a post-hypnotic suggestion could give you greater control over him," she offered. "I could implant a trigger phrase or action that would knock him out, and you'd change back automatically. Then we wouldn't have to come collect you from distant islands after each incident."

He shuddered, which was obvious to Nat even as he tried to suppress it. She expected this would lead to an immediate _no_ , but instead he licked his lips and said, "maybe. I don't know if I trust anyone enough to let them hypnotize me, but... it would have to be something that couldn't be set off by accident."

"Of course." Nat nodded. "I'm sure we can figure something out."

The quinjet lifted off, and they soared away into the blue tropical skies.

* * *

The morning after, Natasha was back in Laoag, boarding a plane. The entire Barton family was heading back to the States together and Nat was going with them, wearing her arrow necklace. She _could_ have gone back on the SHIELD jet with Banner and Fury, but she'd preferred to go with the Bartons – Laura was visibly nervous about getting on another jumbo jet, so Nat hoped her presence would help her friend stay calm.

"Gina better have kept up with watering my tomatoes," said Laura, pushing things into the overhead compartment. "My weather app says it's been dry the entire time we were gone. If I get back and find my vegetables dying of thirst, I'm going to be very unhappy."

"Tomatoes are a fruit, remember?" Clint asked. He was making sure the kids had their belts on, before he settled down in his own seat next to Lila. Laura and Cooper would be sitting in the row ahead, with Natasha across the aisle from them – they were flying business class this time, on SHIELD's dime. "I've always wondered... if tomatoes are a fruit, isn't ketchup by definition a smoothie?"

The kids giggled. Laura just smiled and shook her head. "I thought we talked about this already, the time I caught you drinking it with a straw." She took her own seat. "Natasha, have you got the tablet?"

"Right here." Nat unzipped her bag and handed it over.

"Thanks." Laura started a cartoon playing and then handed it back between the seats. "Here, this will keep her busy."

Clint gave the device to his daughter, as the _Scooby-Doo_ theme began playing on it. "You know," he said with a chuckle, "Velma from _Scooby-Doo_ was my childhood crush. I like 'em short, curvy and smart as a whip."

"You hear that?" asked Laura. "He's kissing up."

"That he is," Natasha agreed. "He does that." She sat back and smiled, at peace with the world and ready to sleep through most of a fourteen-hour flight. "I told you I'd get him back for you, didn't I?" she asked Laura.

"Yes, you did." Laura smiled. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it," Nat said.

There was still red in her ledger and there always would be. But today, perhaps, there was a tiny bit less.

* * *

 _BUT WAIT, you say. What happened to the Hu Xian? Did Yelena survive? How long will SHIELD be able to keep Madame in custody? What powers might Natasha have that she doesn't yet know about? Watch this space, because this story is TO BE CONTINUED._


End file.
